miscellaneous

UCLA faculty interested in finding out about the quality and other characteristics of neighborhood K-12 public schools may be interested in the search engine provided by the California Department of Education. Simply type in the name of the school and the search engine will generate a report.  The engine is a bit clumsy.  For example, when I typed Benjamin Franklin for the name of a Santa Monica school, it showed me options under that name in other areas, but not Santa Monica.  When I typed in just Franklin, it found the school.  So some experimenting may be needed before you…

As previous posts noted, for now the Congressional impasse and government shutdown is having only limited effects on higher ed so far.  The effects will increase as time passes without a resolution. Right now, the prospects of such a resolution are difficult to see.  From the website of the San Francisco Chronicle: Indiana GOP Rep. Marlin Stutzman said he wanted respect in the budget standoff. Instead, he got ridicule from President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats. Stutzman is being mocked for saying Republicans should get something from the budget standoff — but he doesn’t know what that is. The tea…

Not the only blog & not the only way The simple way to read this blog is to do what you are doing now and click on it.  If you do it daily, you won’t miss anything.  (Or, if you do miss, you can always go back in time in it.)  But at the end of each quarter, we have been offering an alternative mode of reading.  If you click on the link below, you can read it like a book for the period July through September 2013.  However, you will find differences in the format and – most important…

Yesterday’s post noted the possibility of a federal govt. shutdown today and possible implications for higher ed. An official listing of services operating and not operating can be found at http://www.usa.gov/shutdown.shtml Varying degrees of information can be found by going to the websites of federal agencies.  For example, the plan for limited operation of the U.S. Dept. of Education is at http://www2.ed.gov/about/furlough2013/contingency-plan.doc Just a reminder that these things don’t always end happily:[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7hZ9jKrwvo?feature=player_detailpage]

Each fall orientation, yours truly does an introduction to California for incoming MPP students at the Luskin School of Public Affairs.  Even California natives or long-time residents may learn something.  It’s in 3 parts below.  Warning: About an hour and a half for the full treatment.  Each part runs about half an hour. Part 1: Part 2: Part 3: The state song referred to in Part 1 is at:

It may be small comfort for the scientifically minded among our blog readers to know that the U.S. is not the only country where science is optional. Italy seems to be strong in that department. From the LA Times: On April 6, 2009, a 6.3 earthquake struck the Italian city of L’Aquila. The quake damaged thousands of medieval-era buildings and killed 309 people. Those deaths prompted Italian prosecutors to charge six seismologists and a government official with manslaughter on the grounds that they gave “inexact, incomplete and contradictory information” about the mortal risks a quake in the area would pose….