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The History of Climate Change Negotiations in 83 Seconds

The annual exercise in futility and finger-pointing that is the United Nations Climate Change Conference will wrap up in Doha today, or perhaps tomorrow—or perhaps never. "I can sit here all year," the Qatari leader of the talks said, according to the BBC. "You decide when to leave."

he United States ditched the Kyoto Protocol in 2001.

As yet another Conference of the Parties comes to a close without any significant progress on what almost everyone involved agrees is one of the world's most pressing problems, it's a good time to take a  glance back at how we arrived at this pathetic state of affairs. This little video, put together by CICERO and the Research Council of Norway, pretty well sums it up.

DON'T JUST BUILD A LIVING, BUILD A LIFE!

Like this? Learn to build a better life at Good Life Project. It’s about building an extraordinary life, deeper relationships and meaningful bodies of work, businesses and movements. It’s about becoming a creator, a leader, a mentor, a giver, a doer. It's about telling a story with your life that you'd want to read and share.

Good Life Project™ Jonathan Fields

Facebook’s Director of Engineering, Jocelyn Goldfein, and John Legend loves...math?

You Caused This Crisis. Now YOU Pay.

Imagine a parallel universe where the Great Crash of 2008 was followed by a Tea Party of a very different kind. Enraged citizens gather in every city, week after week—to demand the government finally regulate the behavior of corporations and the superrich, and force them to start paying taxes. The protesters shut down the shops and offices of the companies that have most aggressively ripped off the country. The swelling movement is made up of everyone from teenagers to pensioners. They surround branches of the banks that caused this crash and force them to close, with banners saying, You Caused This Crisis. Now YOU Pay.

It shifts the national conversation. Instead of letting the government cut our services and increase our taxes, the people demand that it cut the endless and lavish aid for the rich and make them pay the massive sums they dodge in taxes.

Enjoying record profits and taxpayer-funded bailouts as the economy slowly recovers from a financial crisis, nearly two-thirds of US corporations don't pay any income taxes, instead opting to abuse tax loopholes and offshore tax havens. According to this study from the non-partisan Government Accountability Office, 83 of the top 100 publicly traded corporations that operate in the US exploit corporate tax havens. Since 2009, America’s most profitable companies such as ExxonMobil, General Electric, Bank of America andCitigroup all paid a grand total of $0 in federal income taxes to Uncle Sam. Tax havens alone account for up to $1 trillion in tax revenue lost every decade, money that could be invested in K-12 education, colleges, public health, job creation and hundreds of other worthy public programs.
Shocking: Offshore tax havens of the US corporate elite

Others figuring prominently in the corporate tax-haven list are such varied firms as 3M, American Express, Caterpillar, Cisco, ConocoPhillips, Dell, Dow Chemical, Exxon Mobil, FedEx, GM, Kraft, Merck, Pepsi, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Wachovia.

"We need to put an end to the use of offshore secrecy jurisdictions as tax havens," he said. He noted that not all companies use such havens and some use far fewer than others. For example, he said, "Pepsi has 70 tax haven subsidiaries, while Coca Cola has eight; Morgan Stanley has 273, while Fannie Mae has zero; and Caterpillar has 49, while Deere has three." Democratic Sens. Byron Dorgan and Carl Levin, who released the report "The Government Accountability Office (GAO)"

Slide Show: 8 Corporations That Owe You Money

Something Within Me

 Winner of Best Documentary at Sundance, this tells the story of St. Augustine's school. Located in the poorest section of the South Bronx, the teachers and parents fight to keep the school open where art and music are treated as the highest priority.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. discuss the March on Washington.

On "Meet The Press," Roy Wilkins and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. discuss the March on Washington. More than 100,000 people were expected to march in support of civil rights legislation, jobs, freedom and equality.

We're Not Broke (2012)

We're Not Broke is the story of how multi-national corporations make record profits, yet dodge billions of dollars of income tax, and how seven fed-up citizens take their frustration to the streets and vow to make the corporations pay their fair share.

Mickalene Thomas

New York-based artist

Exhibitions: Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe


P.S.1   Brooklyn Museum

  Mickalene Thomas Studio, Inc.

10 Grand Ave, #1-3

Brooklyn, NY 11205

Website: www.mickalenethomas.com

http://www.lehmannmaupin.com/exhibitions/2012-09-08_brooklyn-museum-ny#3
Mickalene Thomas (American, b. 1971). Din, une très belle négresse #2, 2012. Rhinestones, acrylic paint, and oil enamel on wood panel, 102 x 84 x 2 in. (259.1 x 213.4 x 5.1 cm). Private Collection, Boston. Courtesy of the artist, Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York, and Suzanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. © Mickalene Thomas, Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York, and Suzanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Photo by Christopher Burke Studio

The National Constitution Center

The National Constitution Center

The digital age has changed what it means to 'search'

Last month the company hired Ray Kurzweil, an artificial intelligence expert, as its director of research. In the future, he says, Google will know so much about you that it will be able to deliver information before you even ask for it. You won’t need to search at all.

Everything We Know So Far About Drone Strikes

You might have heard about the “kill list.” You’ve certainly heard about drones. But the details of the U.S. campaign against militants in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia -- a centerpiece of the Obama administration’s national security approach – remain shrouded in secrecy. Here’s our guide to what we know—and what we don’t know.

Where is the drone war? Who carries it out?

The drone war is carried out remotely, from the U.S. and a network of secret basesaround the world. The Washington Post got a glimpse – through examining construction contracts and showing up uninvited – at the base in the tiny African nation of Djibouti from which many of the strikes on Yemen and Somalia are carried out. Earlier this year, Wired pieced together an account of the war against Somalia’s al-Shabaab militant group and the U.S.’s expanded military presence throughout Africa.

ROMARE BEARDEN: AN ARTIST IN WINTER

Probably the most famous African-American visual artist of the 20th century, Romare Bearden was best known for a singular approach to collage art that incorporated scraps of wallpaper, glossy magazines, and fabric into a kind of patchwork cubism.

The Smithsonian’s traveling exhibition Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey is currently on view at the Reynolda House Museum of Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

The Most Powerful People: The 71 Who Shape The World

The Most Powerful People: The 71 Who Shape The World

World’s Most Powerful People

There are nearly 7.1 billion people on the planet. These are the 71 men and women who matter the most.

Faith Ringgold

Faith Ringgold's Chronology.
Tar Beach

(1988)* – This story quilt was based on a memory from Ringgold’s childhood, combining fantasy and reality. As a young girl, she would go up to the roof of her building on summer nights. She and her family would eat, play games and cool off from the summer heat on the roof’s tar floor. She would love to gaze up at the stars in the sky and at the lights of the George Washington Bridge. She liked to imagine she could fly and dreamt of making a better life for her family. Ringgold has made over 30 story quilts. She has also designed many soft sculptures and dolls inspired by her African heritage. Ringgold has homes in both New Jersey and California and art studios in New York. Her artwork can be found in museums throughout the world.

Dr. Martin Luther King Day 2012 by Faith Ringgold

jennifer hom works @ Google

Her Blog

Her Bio: a chinese american girl

Her Google Doodle



 

Dr. Martin Luther King Day 2010

"My first year celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, I wanted to depict the steadfastness of his approach to civil rights. Marching arm-in-arm with fellow Americans, Dr. King's acts of civil disobedience made him a symbol for equality."



 

Yong Zhao

News and Interviews about my Book: Catching Up or Leading the Way

Global, Creative, and Entrepreneurial: Defining High Quality Education

Yong Zhao is currently Presidential Chair and Associate Dean for Global Education, College of Education at the University of Oregon, where is a full professor in the Department of Educational Measurement, Policy and Leadership(EMPL). He is a fellow of the International Academy for Education.

Until December, 2010, Yong Zhao was University Distinguished Professor at the College of Education, Michigan State University, where he also served as the founding director of the Center for Teaching and Technology, executive director of the Confucius Institute, as well as the US-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence.

His research interests include educational policy, computer gaming and education, diffusion of innovations, teacher adoption of technology, computer-assisted language learning, and globalization and education.

Zhao has extensive international experiences. He has consulted with government and educational agencies and spoken on educational issues in many countries on six continents. His current work focuses on designing 21st Century Schools in the context of globalization and the digital revolution.

Zhao has published over 20 books and 100 articles. His most recent book is Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization and the Handbook of Asian Education. He has also developed computer software, including the award-winning New Chengo/ZON (http://enterzon.com), the world's first massively multi-player online role-playing game for studying Chinese.

Zhao was born in China's Sichuan Province. He received his B.A. in English Language Education from Sichuan Institute of Foreign Languages in Chongqing, China in 1986. After teaching English in China for six years, he came to Linfield College as a visiting scholar in 1992. He then began his graduate studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1993. He received his A.M. in Education in 1994 and Ph.D. in 1996. He joined the faculty at MSU in 1996 after working as the Language Center Coordinator at Willamette University and a language specialist at Hamilton College.






He published 20 books


Tech & Learning



YouTube:Yong Zhao on Catching Up or Leading the Way
Catching Up or Leading the Way American Education in the Age of Globalization

Emancipation Day: Celebrating 150 Years of History

Today marks the 150 year anniversary of a very important date, especially for us living here in the District of Columbia. It is the sesquicentennial of the day that the slaves in D.C. were freed through an act of Congress.

The Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, as the country entered the third year of the Civil War. It declared that "all persons held as slaves … shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free"—but it applied only to states designated as being in rebellion, not to the slave-holding border states of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri or to areas of the Confederacy that had already come under Union control.

However, many argued that the proclamation didn’t actually free any slaves or destroy the institution of slavery itself—it still only applied to states in active rebellion, not to the slave-holding border states or to rebel areas already under Union control. In reality, it simply freed Union army officers from returning runaway slaves to their owners under the national Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Any escaped slaves who managed to get behind the lines of the advancing Union armies and any who lived in areas subsequently captured by those armies no longer had to be returned because, in the words of the proclamation, they were "thenceforeward, and forever free."

The Emancipation Proclamation
January 1, 1863 

A Transcription

Contours of the African American Culture by Dr. Molefi Kete Asante

Tips 4 Life Stop A Doc

Tips 4 Life
Stop A Doc Campaign

Stop A Doc

UCI Oncology

Adolescents and young adults (AYA) with cancer have often been described as a medically underserved population, falling through the gap between pediatric and adult oncology. As AYAs transition from childhood or adulthood the normal concerns they may have – development of body image, dating, separating from parents, career and education decisions – are compounded when they are faced with cancer. AYA cancer patients may face issues such as infertility, loss of employment/breaks in education due to treatment, increased dependence on parents, and other health concerns that may be exceptionally difficult for this group to cope with.

Source: Zebrack B, Hamilton R, Smith A. Psychosocial Outcomes and Service Use Among Young Adults With Cancer. Semin Oncol. 2009; 36:468-477.

Get Educated: AYA Cancers Overview