HS Comments on the Fly

Scientists from Oxford University, the Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany, and University College London are working on reading people’s intentions, and their results are 70% accurate.

A team of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person’s brain and read their intentions before they act.

The research breaks controversial new ground in scientists’ ability to probe people’s minds and eavesdrop on their thoughts, and raises serious ethical issues over how brain-reading technology may be used in the future. Source

It’s eerily similar to Minority Report. I mean, they’ve already got one of those Perceptive-Pixel-type touch screens that they showed in Minority Report and now they’ve almost got pre-cogs in the form of brain scan software.

If brain-reading can be refined, it could quickly be adopted to assist interrogations of criminals and terrorists, and even usher in a “Minority Report” era … where judgments are handed down before the law is broken on the strength of an incriminating brain scan.

It’s an interesting article and mentions other quite helpful uses for this new technology.

Of course, Minority Report isn’t the only example of science fiction becoming science fact. This article discussing robots’ rights shows how I, Robot could soon become a part of our real world.

“If we make conscious robots they would want to have rights and they probably should,” said Henrik Christensen, director of the Centre of Robotics and Intelligent Machines at the Georgia Institute of Technology….

Robots and machines are now classed as inanimate objects without rights or duties but if artificial intelligence becomes ubiquitous, the report argues, there may be calls for humans’ rights to be extended to them.

It is also logical that such rights are meted out with citizens’ duties, including voting, paying tax and compulsory military service.

Mr Christensen said: “Would it be acceptable to kick a robotic dog even though we shouldn’t kick a normal one? There will be people who can’t distinguish that so we need to have ethical rules to make sure we as humans interact with robots in an ethical manner so we do not move our boundaries of what is acceptable.”

The Horizon Scan report argues … “If granted full rights, states will be obligated to provide full social benefits to them including income support, housing and possibly robo-healthcare to fix the machines over time,” it says.

I think we’re going to be hearing “Orwellian” and “Brave New World” with increasing frequency as time goes on. However, it doesn’t look like my remaining student is all too interested in reading either book. I wonder if there’s some other good sci-fi that I could scare up to tempt her. I’m open to suggestions.

Our current motto is “So easy a homeschooled can do it,” which was inspired by our friends the Geico Cavemen.

Today, though, Amy over at Inside the Foil Hat Blog is linking to Link and Rhett who warn folks to “Beware the homeschoolers.” It’s an excellent sentiment, so it’s imperative that it be adopted as our new homeschool motto. It’s part of Rhett and Link’s Viral Boom.

I’ve tried Amy’s soap. Its suds are thick and creamy. I got the Rosemary Mint w/Dead Sea Mud. She’s got all sorts of different soaps, pots of fragrant shea butter, and other spa goodies. Go check ‘em out!

Background: Oracle of Bacon and SixDegrees.org

The Learning Umbrella did an experiment with the whole six degrees of separation thing at her journal the other day. The comments section showed that Camian Academy provided results of the experiment when its author did it. Then I did a special search and found that Mother Crone also did it.

(The Learning Umbrella has the guidelines.)

1. From here I clicked on Homeschooling in the Garden State — lots of pics, new homeschoolers, joy.

2. Then clicked on Gottfredsen Academy — they’re sick right now — dead end because there are no links to other journals.

So I backed up and clicked on Waterfront Learning — bowling and sign language — another dead end.

So I backed up and clicked on Painted Rainbows and Chamomile Tea — homeschool preschool.

3. Next I’m off to makingpeace, where they own a king snake — dead end because of no links to other journals.

So I backed up … okay, this backing up is getting old and a little disheartening. So I clicked on Cozy as Spring — and busy as a bee, if you ask me.

4. Next I tried A Gypsy Caravan — four children, sledding, hip or not hip mom.

5. Bo of the Bales was my next stop where I learned about their doomsday kitchen clock.

6. Okay, this will be my last stop. I end up at By Sun and Candlelight — bakes with Crisco and uses learning tables.

I ended up way off into the homeschooling journal wilderness. Oh, I know it’s just another neighborhood, but where I ended up was so many links away from where I started it seems like I got lost. It was quite a trip.

Someone should figure out how to turn this into a meme or youyou or something, but please make sure that The Learning Umbrella gets credit/blame for being the founder.

Okay, so maybe Rosetta Stone seems cheap to you at $200+. But there is another program out there in case you just think that Rosetta Stone is couldn’t possibly be worth what they’re charging.

We were using Triple Play Plus years ago when Rosetta Stone first came out … or when we first heard of it anyway. Around 2000 we got the free disk to try out Rosetta Stone — before we bought it. But it was so similar to Triple Play Plus, that I wasn’t ever sure that Triple Play Plus wouldn’t serve our needs just fine. The result was that we never bought Rosetta Stone.

Even now, I’m not convinced that Rosetta Stone is better. Oh, I know it could be and probably is. But Triple Play Plus gives us enough practice that I figure we’ll be fine without Rosetta Stone. We still haven’t gotten to the end of Triple Play Plus in French, Italian, or Spanish.

But if you’re wanting something to supplement Rosetta Stone, you know, something for review, Triple Play Plus (TPP) would be handy. Also, if you’re saving up for Rosetta Stone, you can get Triple Play Plus right now and use it until you can afford Rosetta Stone.

Triple Play Plus can be used by students aged 8 to adult. There aren’t as many languages choices as Rosetta Stone, so that can be a drawback. There’s Italian, French, Spanish, German, Hebrew, Japanese, and possibly others. That’s all I saw listed online. Info on Triple Play Plus is severely limited because the company got bought out and then soon afterward went out of business. So even the software is a little old and, depending on when it was published, wonky.

You can still buy it sometimes on www.ebay.com really, really cheap — for like about $5 - $8 plus shipping. I think I bought our copies of French and Spanish for $50 or so each at Costco. TPP auctions are infrequent, but you just have to go to eBay and use “My eBay” to have notices of when Triple Play Plus goes up for auction sent to your email. I think you do this through “All Favorites” and then “Searches” — at least that how I do it.

Oh, and don’t tell your friends. There aren’t that many copies of TPP out there. Not too many people read this blog, so there are no worries there.

We got the Spanish and the Italian programs to work with Vista by fiddling with the compatability features of Vista. We also have the programs currently running with a little tweaking on XP, but use at your own risk. No guarantees.

And yes, we really like it. No English is used; it’s pictures and a native speaker. 3 levels: Aural, Text, and Voice Recognition. And there are also different levels of progression in those sections, though I’ve not used the Voice Recognition too much.

Funny story: Back in the mid-late 90s, when I had little kids, I was friends with another mom who had lived in France. She had little ones also. So she came over to my house, and my husband and kids went over to hers. I don’t think that’s clear, so I’ll try again. Our husbands took care of the little people at her house, and we ladies got a night off … to goof around with the French Triple Play Plus. Oh, yes, what a wild life I lead.

Actually, though, we were trying to put TPP through its paces. She thought the speaker/announcer was quite good. So we blended ourselves some margaritas and sat down to play one of the games for two people. Fine. It was fun. We heard many, “Félicitations!” and other French words of delight when we clicked on the correct pictures, etc. We were so proud of ourselves.

Then we started the voice recognition stuff with our frozen tongues. We did fairly well, but there was one phrase that we must have tried 30 - 50 times. I am not kidding. We’d say it in French, but the program just kept responding with the French words for “Not quite right. Try again.” It felt like the announcer was only mocking us, though. Being mocked by the French … could that be a little irritating?

We kept repeating something like, “La souris est sous la chaise” over and over again. (The mouse is under the chair.) We knew we could get it correct. We were stubborn persistent, but we did finally give up with some words of disgust like, “This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. And I hate it.” And as the microphone was tossed to the side, the program cheerfully said, “Formidable!” Roughly translated that means, “Finally you got it right, you idiot Americans.” Anyway, we laughed so hard we about fell over.

That’s a cute cottage, isn’t it? It’s in Scotland. I’m so glad we’re not homeschooling in it, though it does have lovely cathedral ceilings. Be sure to watch your head when you walk in.

Just about five miles away from this lovely abode is Inverness, a city which is sometimes called the capital of the Scottish Highlands. Their local paper is running a story about the Highland Council’s discussion of increasing governmental oversight of homeschoolers in that particular region.

It all started with Michael Foxley’s “flaky” and “scary” comments when he heard that there were about 100 children being home educated across that section of the Highlands. Since the Scottish Highlands are rather sparsely populated, maybe 100 students is a lot. Inverness alone has a population of around 50,000 - 60,000.

Michael Foxley is the vice-convener of the Highland Council, and, frankly, I find his simple words refreshing. He’s not all pretentiously loquacious, employing esoteric terms with the intention of confusing the masses. He uses common words even though he’s got a doctorate in something or other. Did you go and look at his photo? He looks friendly, don’t you think? Doesn’t he look like just the kind of fellow you’d like visiting your home and children to verify that “… everything is fine …” there? Well, maybe … but lunch downtown at The Mustard Seed would likely be more pleasant — with a caveat that home education wouldn’t be discussed. (That’s The Mustard Seed to the left of the church, there on the bank of the River Ness.)

Foxley wants to “… see the [home education] experience….” Here’s the complete quote from the article:

[Foxley’s] underlying concern is that a parents’ right to teach their child at home appears to override the child’s right to a comprehensive education.

“The council has a real responsibility to look after the interests of the child and that could mean going against the interests of the parents,” he said. “With the numbers involved it’s very likely that, although some of them will be educated very well, you are almost guaranteed there will be cases where the reasons for withdrawal are flaky.

“We need to be in a position to ensure that the child is being properly educated and only by seeing the experience the child is receiving at home can we assess that. We must have a right to intervene.”

So, Foxley wants the right to intervene and wants to see the experience the child is receiving in the home. Maybe more of those cameras that are used all over the UK could provide a view inside the home. They would likely work quite well. But they would cost the Council a lot of money, so that’s likely not going to work out. But maybe the homeschooling parents could be required to install the cameras; have them pay for the cameras. (You know I’m just being silly about the cameras, right?)

To continue with a little less levity … Donnie MacDonald, another Highland Council member, has fears that some students may be slipping through the net. He states:

“We seek a meeting with the family, ask to visit the home to see the arrangements made for the child’s education and meet the youngsters themselves. Our main concern is to work in collaboration with the family to ensure the child receives an acceptable education.”

So, this could raise a number of questions:

If parents have flaky reasons for homeschooling, will they still be allowed to homeschool their children?

Just what constitutes flaky?

Does a flaky reason for home educating necessarily indicate that the parents can’t provide an acceptable education within the law?

Why aren’t the parents capable of looking out for the interests of their own child once the child reaches school age?

Right now the parents aren’t required to provide home visits. Is that going to change?

Homeschooling seems to be on the rise in Scotland in general and probably in the Inverness area, too. So, will the word “scary” be changed to “totally scary, dude” in the near future?

What would Robbie Burns do?

Where’s a good place to get Scottish homeschooling (or home education or natural education) information? This one I know the answer to: Schoolhouse or Education Otherwise.

Narathiwat, a province in south Thailand, is looking into homeschooling as a way to protect its school-age children in the face of increasing violence in the area.

The Narathiwat Edcuation Office is seeking funding from the United Nations Children’s fund (UNICEF) to help compose the “self learning lessons” for school children in the violence-plagued province, part of the deep South where an estimated 1,900 people have died violently over the past three years, said the Thai News Agency.

Thawat Saehumy, chairman of the Narathiwat Teachers’ Federation, said the home-study courses were being prepared in case the province was forced to close down some of its 200 schools because of lack of security.

The Bangkok Post reports:

Thailand is asking the United Nations for help to draw up home-schooling courses in case the escalating insurgency forces schools in the South to close for an extended period….

The declining numbers of teachers willing to teach in Thailand’s troubled southernmost border provinces has led to the appeal for help.

Teachers now believe that home schooling provides the best chance of educating southern children without losing their own lives.

So, we’re still reading Virginia’s General by Marrin. It’s about General Lee. No, not Bo and Luke Duke’s car, but its namesake. This book was out of print for a while, and the price went a little high — that was when I bought my copy. But now this book is priced reasonably because a homeschool publisher re-published it and a few of Marrin’s other books.

The other day we read about the Union and Confederate soldiers making contact with each other during the war. In this case, it was when they were camped on opposite sides of the Rappahannock River. At these times, pickets (lookouts) would holler at each other for trades. The South could trade their tobacco since they had plenty of it. The North might send over some sugar or coffee, which the South had a difficult time getting its hand on. Little sailboats were used to complete the trades.

Here’s a quote from the book:

[Lee’s] only objection was to a trade in Southern newspapers, which foolishly printed articles about his positions and troop movements. He, like his Northern foes, believed freedom of the press must be limited in time of war. (p.106)

This book is full of interesting little tidbits. Without them, I can find non-fiction history books a little too facty. A little more personal slant on things spices things up — that’s what I like about Marrin’s books. He manages to research and find personal accounts or other source documents that often give us a more realistic view of history, full of little-known tidbits. I wrote a long review of Marrin’s Sea King (Sir Francis Drake) a whopping eight years ago; it describes how Marrin’s writes (but embarrassingly shows my ignorance of a few things).

I saw that a movie titled Duma was on this morning. Thinking it might be about Russia and the last czar, I decided to check it out. Imagine my surprise when I found out that it’s a movie about a young African boy’s journey to release his pet cheetah, named Duma, into the wild. The sounds that the cheetah makes are intriguing. Though I’d been right up next to one at the St. Louis Zoo, I’d never heard one until this morning.

Based on a true story, Xan ends up with a baby cheetah, raises it, then is told by his father that he can’t keep it forever. Eventually the boy heads off alone on a motorbike with Duma in the side car. He runs out of petrol and soon afterward forges a shaky alliance with a wanderer. Hippos, cape buffalo, giraffes, crocs, lions, etc., are seen, along with the stunning landscape that southern Africa is famous for. Without trying to tell too much, the wanderer has friends that he meets up with, who Xan meets also. Duma makes the transition to the wild, and Xan goes home.

So, since we watched this during the day, my daughter will now be making up a bit of time this evening with her algebra. If she were 10, we’d count it for school. But there’s just not enough there for a high schooler. I’m glad I could dig out my atlas and look at it and also work on a quilt because, while it’s a nice movie, it’s for the younger set.

I suspect that we may be the last of the homeschoolers to find out about this movie — it did come out in 2005 — but I think it would be a great addition to a study of southern Africa. I wouldn’t say that it’s a necessary resource, but grades 3 to 6 would probably enjoy it quite well.

I’m glad we homeschool so that we could properly commemorate Groundhog Day.

I wanted to skip it this year, but my daughter chirped, “But it’s tradition.”

And she is right. We watch it every year. Even though today I would have rather just stuck with the schedule, which makes me feel like we’re on the right track.

So we watched Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell in the eternal classic Groundhog Day. We got it out of the way early.

This, of course, leads us right into our “Quote for Homeschooling Use.” You see, any time anyone says, “I’ll finish it (algebra, writing, science) tomorrow,” any family member can reply,

Well, what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn’t one today.

~ Phil in Groundhog Day

It’s not quite a movie for the very young — too many suicide attempts which would likely be confusing, plus there’s other objectional stuff. But for those of us who can stomach some of the bad, like when Phil just hauls off and punches Ned, Ned Ryerson, it ends up being a touching story.

Well, here are a few posts of interest to homeschoolers. They are comments made by college instructors about some homeschool students they’re dealing with, plus replies. It makes for interesting reading, possibly instructive … or not.

Tammy in Topeka Is Tired of T. [Who Was Homeschooled]

response for Tammy — How to School the Homeschooler

Homeschooled or Unschooled?

We Hear From Some of the Homeschooled

This is what I’m seeing as today’s homeschool news.

(Format: Article title, followed by short excerpt with some homeschooling info included.)

Libraries slated to close in Oregon
Applegate resident Chris Shockey, who homeschools his family, said he checked out 1,176 items from the library last year. He estimated that without libraries, it would cost $7,000 to homeschool a family.

Christian Fascism: The Jesus Gestapo of St. Orwell (book review)
Millions of children in America are being home-schooled, and 75% of them are children from fundamentalist Christian homes. Home-schooling can offer an extraordinary alternative to attending public school, but for fundamentalist Christians, it serves, among other things, to shield their children not only from grappling with such issues as evolution and global warming, but learning the scientific method itself and the basic principles of critical thinking and logical analysis.

Dozier: American history subject of DAR’s essay contest
The contestant winners are … Nathaniel Stine of DeWitt, homeschool, 10th grade.

Authorities ask help in finding missing boy
A 9-year-old Longview [Washington] boy has been missing since before 8 a.m. Wednesday…. Michael D. Dalgardno was reported as a runaway by his parents around noon on Wednesday after they checked places where they thought he might go. He is homeschooled.