All wired up

By Michael J. Smith on Monday June 25, 2012 10:23 PM

This just in:

[T]he Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is spending about $1.1 million to develop a way to physiologically measure how engaged students are by their teachers’ lessons. This involves “galvanic skin response” bracelets that kids would wear so their engagement levels could be measured.
Now of course for the Gates Foundation $1.1 mil is chicken feed -- that's about what they spend arranging a conference call, according to an acquaintance of mine who works there. Still, this is a grim item.

Bill & Melinda have backed off on what their web site originally said:

A foundation spokesman said that the purpose of the [grant] is not related to teacher evaluation and that the Web site shouldn’t have said it was.
Oh well, that's all right then. As long as the telemetry from these experimental classroom animals isn't being used for 'teacher evalution'.

My mole in the Gates Foundation tells me that Bill & Melinda are never referred to as such within the Death Star; nor even as Mr and Mrs Gates. The correct term is 'The Living Donors'.

Comments (28)

diane:

Wuzn’t that speshul news, and certainly it was high speshul that that stunningly evil plan, after being exposed by Valerie Strauss (on June 10th), in the Washington [swampus rattus norwegicus DC] Post, never appeared to even approach the Front Page Nooz in the Major Metro/WIFI/Tech Gadgetry UZ Cities (let alone the last page nooz) whose economies are entirely entwined ...ruled by, the Gates, Jobs, Ellisons, Theil and Zuckerfucks, etc., of the world. I certainly didn’t see it in the SEC BLESSED, Sly Con Valley, Cali Murky Nooz, nor on any of the Sly Con Valley, Cali centric Blawwwwgs.

diane:

(not to say that the owners of the Washington Post aren't every bit in on the avaricious (for profit only schools, for just one major crime) 'game,' and rampant sadism. Just to say: the powers that be engage in well planned steam venting; to that end, they employ well meaning 'underlings' - such as, perhaps, Valerie - to appear to be providing a public service announcement to our dear DC Public Swampus Servants,..well after the damage already done has made things near unrepairable.)

sk:

The correct term is 'The Living Donors'.

They probably have a long afterlife ahead of them too.

"The Living Donors" sounds like the title of an afternoon soap opera.

op:

for the record(FTR)

i like diane's comments
both
style and slant

------------------

living donuts

op:

btw

animal experimentation
may deserve better then
use as
the virtual equivalent
of the jaw bone of an Ass

suggesting there is a useful "moral" divide
between vountary experiments
and willed experiences

strikes me as implicitly atheistic

anne shew:

is diane (to diane if you are around for the query .. , i'll add that i've been here for a couple of weeks i think ) as new to smithing and the mystery of owen as i am .. or has she been around here commenting for a while .. . ?

op:

"That’s more than $1.1 million that could have been spent on things that schools actually need"

here it comes ..


" books, teachers, librarians "

how endearingly retro


books ? ... text books ?

perhaps the biggest budgetary boongoggle
of all

teachers ?

we have more then enough
public school teachers already
thank u

certainly we need to distribute and deploy them differently
and level up their pay
from disttrict to district

the schools simply need more
pedagogical auxliaries
both
of the meat and digital varieties

librarians ?

please ....!

what
to shuffle about those obsolete hard copy
sources
of "words voices sounds and images "?

PeterC:

This involves “galvanic skin response” bracelets...

Wouldn't collars be more effective?

I'm thinking more like dog shock collars. For the invisible boundaries of the mind schools create.

If, and counting:

Diane and Anne Shew are of approximately the same seniority as SMBIVA commenters. They differ primarily in the granularity of their cut and paste.

Merkin in Montreal:

This reminds me of a genius idea that a mystery co-worker introduced years ago when I was working as a techweenie for this Biotech giant in the Bay Area. Back then, the company used to make every employee take a Personalysis test that resulted in a color coded chart to help you and your manager better understand each other (what a crock of shit)! A few years later when the company started tightening its belt and laying off employees, someone hacked the email system and sent a company wide email under the president’s name announcing that due to budget cuts, the company was to replace Personalysis tests with Mood Rings! The announcement further added that all employees were required to wear their Mood Rings when meeting with their managers to facilitate better communication! I must add that the mystery co-worker/hacker was eventually found out but because the company’s Masters of the Universe found his spoof so entertaining, he was spared of the axe!

anne shew:

to if,and counting , of granular, paste and cutting , do you mean something of my off pebbling is too difficult for most here to read , sorry , i didn't mean to start reading more and commenting , it was the odd comparing of this owen and myself that was being made in a few other places that i wanted to point out here ,of how we are very different.. , i'll stop now on the commenting if i am too odd for this group.. , anne

diane:

Thank you op, I’m just now commenting but I want you to know how much you significantly warmed my day when I read your compliment earlier. It felt so good that someone might understand my comments about a national technology obsessed ‘direction’ that’s been near unquestioningly embarked upon which horrifies me and which I expressed in all seriousness.

Anne, I think you and I coincidentally started posting here around the same day, a few weeks back (I’ve been reading posts here for a while but not commenting). Also, maybe the cut and paste remark was meant to be ironic? if not I won’t worry about it, or the sock puppet accusation posts by some. I suspect my crime was not showing the proper obeisance to the Technology Gods and The Cloud, and I don’t have a clue what those posters are suspicious of you for.

Al Schumann:

I want to add my voice to the call for galvanic collars that provide corrective shocks. Also, Night of the Living Donors sounds like a perfect business model.

If, and counting:

to anne shew, your off pebbling is as musical to my ears as the song of solomon. when alec, my voice over reader, reads the comments aloud to me, I step over to IOZ for a glimpse of your fetching cloche...

still. I often don't quite get it ...

Al Schumann:

Diane, the accusations of sock puppetry are the sad hobby of a cantankerous old hipster with too much time on his hands. The ever-changing screen names are supposed to be "ironic". Sometimes he lapses into baby talk. That, too, is "ironic". Maybe he's rebelling against the stifling proprieties of the bourgeoisie and, like so many hipsters, is making an embarrassing hash of it. Or maybe he's just another asshole.

Anne, I don't like to get avuncular, but... lexical eccentricities are a magnet for people who can't resist the urge to get personal with perfect strangers. The combination creates a roving behavioral sink.

anne shew:

al, to me it's not eccentric,or odd (i only say odd because that is what i am picking up from others ), it's my voice, something tonal of my own carry of from mouth sounds would help . my voicing in the same way that each of you talks ,writes here is yours ..

anne shew:

a sampling of being my voice , not the best .. but a sampling of some of , a little , of the small lettering , of my quiet, gentle .. of how i wander even in writing , and the flow of no caps as well is suited to me in other ways , and it also suggests some difficulty with my hands in typing , of the no caps ,of how moving my hands over the keys here , and of the brev.

Al Schumann:

Anne, for what it's worth, I don't mind. If I can make sense of tone and persona, I do. If I can't, or I'm fretting over something unrelated, I let it wash over me and go on to something else. It's all good, as far as I'm concerned. Usually.

anne shew:

al , trying to communicate while still keeping some ..more than tonal of my voice , not having it lost in all that this.. more than all wired up ..of what it requires .. ,/ of my punctuating .. something of it was removed with parts of my small intestine as a child i believe.. / of schu's h. just above ,is that you pen k once trot .. . or just another from your fine planet , or maybe toast on a day with no spread ..

anne shew:

iF, .. why this alec reader when you suggest also of somehow seeing my cloche .. ? and i grew up in a setting with no following of any well known religious flavo'r ,when you say song of .. i hear kate b. saying something of ..don't want your ..( i don't swear much of what would be the next word ), ..just want your sexuality .. , and something of a lily , in my just being exposed to run offs of religious .. .

anne shew:

if, and counting , i hope that you can still see my question there at 2,40pm ,when you come around in the night , in the midst of .. on a stick's pond reflecting .. .

If, and counting:

to anne shew, I don't quite get it... my last.... best wishes...

anne shew:

if, .. , if you come back to look , .. try please ..to answer on why the alec reader ? i'm not at all tec', but disabled , it would be something nice to have at times .. something of

If, and counting:

alec (alex?)is a synthetic voice, one of several available, that reads highlighted text when the voiceover facility is invoked under the universal access programs of the macintosh operating system. there may be something similar with windows.

my last...

anne shew:

you typed alec up above ,maybe a slip of x/c , can you say why you are using it ? if you look back .. .

MJS:

I am large. I contain multitudes. As the man said.

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