Link roundup

1. Whale shark and swimmer.



2. Enrollment at for profit colleges is way down:
new University of Phoenix enrollment is down over 40 percent from last year, 47 percent from Kaplan.
3. Some guesses as to how Hugo Chávez will transport 211 tons of physical gold from Europe to Caracas.
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1. From an article on jock culture:
Despite the many ways males can identify themselves as "real men" in our culture—size, sexuality, power, money, fame—nothing seems as indelible as the mark made in childhood when the good bodies are separated from the bad bodies, the team from the spectators. The designated athletes are rewarded with love, attention and perks. The leftovers struggle with their resentments and their search for identity.
2. Free Tap Tap Glee iTunes app sounds fun. Via.

3. "The writer/artist of the Popeye daily comic strip was fired for a series of strips involving jokes about abortion."
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1. Gawker on Newt Gingrich's 1.3 million Twitter followers:
About 80 percent of those accountsare inactive or are dummy accounts created by various "follow agencies," another 10 percent are real people who are part of a network of folks who follow others back and are paying for followers themselves (Newt's profile just happens to be a part of these networks because he uses them, although he doesn't follow back), and the remaining 10 percent may, in fact, be real, sentient people who happen to like Newt Gingrich.
2. NBC is claiming that its new show The Playboy Club is about female empowerment.

3. A little less corporate-funded propaganda in schools:
In response to pressure from parents, educators and grassroots advocates, Scholastic Inc. will drastically limit its practice of partnering with corporations to produce classroom material, the company announced last week.

The publisher had been under fire since May, when it was forced to stop distributing a fourth-grade curriculum called “The United States of Energy” that had been paid for by the coal industry and distributed to classrooms across the country.
Via.
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1. Arguments against attending cooking school.

2. XKCD on media reports of hacking. Penny Arcade on the 3DS.

3. Diablo III will allow players to auction off virtual goods for real money. I wonder if that will be a major selling point, or just a feature that benefits gold farmers (The Old Republic looks nice, but if I can make money while I play...).
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1. For other Blogger users, here's a useful comment by a Blogger employee from Ann Althouse's blog:
While our export tools may have been somewhat unreliable when handling blogs this large (Althouse is one of the largest Blogger blogs!), along the way helping Ann we discovered ways to improve them and moving forward Blogger will be much better equipped to handle cases like this.

So Ann while I'm personally sad to see you go (if that is indeed the decision), I wanted to let you know that you will always have a home on Blogger and a team who cares about your experience with Blogger. That also (of course) goes for everyone. We love hearing from users, and anyone can bug me directly on Twitter (@electrobutter) if something is on their mind, or hit up the team via @blogger.
It seems like such a typical Google thing to do to make such outreach efforts only when it was too late to keep her on the platform. Her entire Blogger blog was deleted, possibly by error, possibly by a rogue Google employee, last month.

2. "An investigation into Atlanta’s public school system has uncovered evidence that teachers and principals have been secretly erasing and correcting answers on students’ tests for as long as a decade."

3. "For the past few years, networks have been digitally inserting ads and product placements for new products into old reruns."
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1. The Los Angeles public school system is reducing the emphasis on homework, making it now account for no more than 10% of students' grades. This criticism is pathetic:
Critics — mostly teachers — worry that the policy will encourage students to slack off assigned work and even reward those who already disregard assignments. And they say it could penalize hardworking students who receive higher marks for effort.
Shouldn't the teachers be confident that the kids who work the hardest on homework will also score the best on tests?

2. I might have linked to this before, but since it won an Emmy, here's a video by the Washington Post in which a comic book cover featuring Frank Cho's Brandy character (based on Lynda Carter) is brought to life. Via.

3. Seven fascinating moments in online video game history.
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Link roundup

1. Robin Hanson:
Yes, maybe homework helps kids to learn things that their tests do not test. But more likely, homework functions to get kids used to doing a lot of work, in preparation for their future industry era jobs. Learning seems secondary.
2. Elephant and rhino playing tag.

3. Tie Fighter helmet.
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Link roundup

1. Tax dollars at work in Southern California:
When it's completed this fall, Riverside's Hillcrest High School will be a high-tech academic hub with wireless Internet, a robotics lab, digital smart boards in every classroom and a first-rate performance hall worthy of any "Glee" hopeful.

But no students.

Sapped by state budget cuts, the Alvord Unified School District doesn't have the money to turn on the lights or hire staff for the $105-million campus.
2. Young Jason Kidd.

3. It's a tremendous shame George Takei hasn't been able to show off his personality until the last few years.
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Link roundup

1. Create a Star Wars name contest.

2. Mickey Kaus:
It would be ironic if Amherst-style reforms finally gave lower income Americans greater access to college just when elites were concluding that college isn’t worth it. But when you think about it, a non-college world in which high school graduates acquired the skills they wanted on the web or in ad hoc classes and proved their worth by performing well in actual jobsmight be a preferable form of meritocracy. a) There would be no “signaling” of status for life, the way an Ivy League degree now signals status for life.
3. Bradley Cooper wants to make a Hyperion movie so bad that he submitted a spec script. (I love the book, but it's probably unfilmable.) Via.
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Brochure for a college criminology course




Criminology and Criminal Justice brochure by Junior for Griffith University. Via.
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Image roundup

A few gems, mostly spotted at Reddit:


Middle school classroom/cabinet of wonders.



Petra, Jordan.



Fleeing a dragon.



If you see something, skate something. Via.



Deadly bird.
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Link roundup

1. "In honor of the new crime thriller video game L.A. Noire coming to Playstation®3 and Xbox360® on May 17, 2011, the Los Angeles Times and Rockstar Games present this special archive edition Crime Map detailing just a few of the fascinating and frightening crimes that made 1947 such a landmark year for LAPD detectives." Via.

2. From a longer article about design school, advice I wish I had when I was still in school:
Ask anybody that went to school what they thought of it, and you will get the same response. “It was ok, not great. But this one teacher changed made it all worth while.” It’s exactly that one or two teachers that you connect with that make the school experience “worth it”. When you find your mentor, go out of your way to take more classes with them. Ask them for guidance and have them critique your work HARD. Their advice will be more than worth the tuition.
3. Plastic Army Men with PTSD and various injuries. (Some might find these offensive.) Via these sites.

*Previously: Killzone Army Men.
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1. SF Chronicle:
In a pants-on-fire moment, the White House press office today denied anyone there had issued threats to remove Carla Marinucci and possibly other Hearst reporters from the press pool covering the President in the Bay Area.

Chronicle editor Ward Bushee called the press office on its fib:

Sadly, we expected the White House to respond in this manner based on our experiences yesterday. It is not a truthful response. It follows a day of off-the-record exchanges with key people in the White House communications office who told us they would remove our reporter, then threatened retaliation to Chronicle and Hearst reporters if we reported on the ban, and then recanted to say our reporter might not be removed after all.
2. The time Jim Carrey went totally nuts for new year's eve on David Letterman.

3. How law schools trick students into attending by promising them merit scholarships, and then keeping secret how likely it is that they will lose the scholarship after their first or second year. Via.
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1. One particular person was caught posing as various people in Reddit's Ask Me Anything feature (including a blind guy, a deaf girl, a pickpocket, and a mean high school cheerleader).

2. Move over grade inflation, here's course name inflation:
the content of these courses is not as high-achieving as their names — the course-title equivalent of grade inflation. Algebra II is sometimes just Algebra I. And College Preparatory Biology can be just Biology.
3. "4 Great Ways to Convert Partial RSS Feed To Full RSS Feed."
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Link roundup

1. George Mason University School of Law invented a new grade - - the A+*.

2. You can watch a live stream from Coachella at Youtube.

3. Jeaux Janovsky is looking for commissions.

4. Josh Howard, too.
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Link roundup

1. My son's reaction to last night's interminable season finale to season three of The Clone Wars: "What's taking so long?"

2. How to make Minecraft-esque building blocks for the real world. Via.

3. "A USA Today investigation found what appears to be compelling evidence of teacher cheating in Washington, D.C., schools that were heralded as major successes due to test score increases." Via.
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Image roundup

A few gems from Reddit:


Jenga is off the hook.



College classes.



X-Ray photobomb.



Power plant breaking through the clouds, perhaps?.




Fast and the Furious Jr.



Yin and yang cats.
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Link roundup

1. 15 conspiracy movies that don’t fall apart at the end. I'd add Total Recall to the list.

2. Today, Bulletstorm is 33% off Amazon.

3. Drawing the reproductive system. (Funny, but NSFW.) Via.
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Link roundup

1. An assertion that Detroit will soon close half its public schools, leading to 60+ kids in each class. (Schools in Los Angeles face a prospect nearly as dire.) Via.

2. Maybe it's just because I don't like brainteasers that much, or maybe it's because I haven't enjoyed a Spielberg movie in at least 10 years, but I find it a little hard to believe that people (as opposed to marketers pretending to be fans) have really spent so much effort deciphering clues about the JJ Abrams/Spielberg movie Super 8.

3. McDonald's inedible new oatmeal apparently contains more sugar than a Snickers bar.
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