Medical Marijuana

The legalization of marijuana for medicinal use as recommended by a licensed physician

is a highly controversial issue. Under the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, California

became the first state to legalize marijuana for medicinal use. Unfortunately for the

beneficiaries of this act, federal law states that marijuana is a Schedule I drug under the

Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act. Under this act, there are five

such schedules classifying different drugs, both legal and illegal, based on potential

for abuse, accepted medicinal use, accepted safety for use in medical treatment when

supervised by a licensed physician.(AP) To be placed as a Schedule I drug "the drug or

other substance has a high potential for abuse, has no currently accepted medical use

in treatment in the United States, and a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or

other substance under medical supervision"(Authority and criteria for classification of

substances).

A drug can be moved, added or removed from any schedule in which it is placed if

and when there is scientific evidence showing medicinal usability. Said changes to

the schedules can be initiated by the Attorney General, Administrator of the DEA, the

Secretary of Health and Human Services, or by the petitioning of any interested party,

including pharmaceutical companies and private citizens.

The first step taken by the United States to criminalize marijuana was the Marijuana

Tax Act of 1937. This act did not directly criminalize the drug, but instead, imposed

a one dollar tax on commercially dealt marijuana. The penalty for not paying theses

taxes was up to two thousand dollars in fines and up to five years in prison. This act

made it too risky for anyone to deal this drug. In 1969 the Marijuana Tax Act was found

unconstitutional, on the grounds that anyone seeking a tax stamp would incriminate

themselves, thus violating the fifth amendment. Congresses response to this was the

Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970. This was the first step

of Nixon's modern war on drugs.

In California, the Compassionate Use Act, or Proposition 215, was drafted to "ensure that

seriously ill Californians have the right to obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes

where that medical use is deemed appropriate and has been recommended by a physician

who has determined that the person's health would benefit from the use of marijuana in

the treatment of cancer, anorexia, AIDS, chronic pain, glaucoma, arthritis, migraine, or

any other illness for which marijuana provides relief"(The Compassionate Use Act of

1996). This law gave California physicians the right to prescribe marijuana to patients

to counteract nausea brought on by medications patients were already on and as a pain

killer. For patients such as Angel Raich, who has an inoperable brain tumor, wasting

syndrome, chronic pain disorders, scoliosis, nausea, and several other documented

medical problems, marijuana was literally a life saver. From 1996 to 1999, Ms. Raich

was confined to a wheelchair. She credits marijuana for allowing her to get out of the

wheelchair and restoring mobility to the right side of her body. Due to her allergies and

chemical sensitivities to almost all conventional pharmaceutical medications, treating

her ailments is almost impossible. Another patient prescribed medical marijuana was

Ms. Diane Monson. Medical marijuana completely eliminates the chronic back spasms

she has had for many years. She has tried many other prescription and non-prescription

medications but they left her feeling nauseous and groggy. Marijuana has neither of these

side effects.

On August 15, 2002, the county sheriffs and agents from the DEA raided Ms. Monson's

house. After thoroughly searching the house, the sheriffs decided that her 6 canibis plants

were completely legal. The DEA thought otherwise, and "after a 3-hour standoff, the

federal agents seized and destroyed" all of her plants(Stevens, 2). When taken to the

Supreme Court, the case no longer was about whether marijuana has medicinal value

and should be made available to those in need, but "whether Congress' power to regulate

interstate markets for medicinal substances encompasses the portions of those markets

that are supplied with drug provided and consumed locally"(Stevens,3). Their final

decision was that patients or caregivers who cultivate marijuana for medicinal use "can

only increase the supply of marijuana in the California market" and "that such production

will promptly terminate when patients recover or will precisely match the patients'

medical need" seems unlikely(Stevens, 10).

Fortunately for people like Ms. Raich and Ms. Monson, not everyone in government

feels this way. Justice O'Connor of the Supreme Court believes that one of the virtues of

federalism is "that it promotes innovation by allowing for the possibility that "a single

courageous state may, if it's citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social

and economic experiments without risks to the rest of the country'"(O'Connor,1). The

Compassionate Use Act is a prime example of the a State serving as a laboratory. States

powers have always included the ability to determine what are criminal acts and protect

the welfare, heath, and safety of their citizens. In using those powers, California and

it's citizens have come to a decision regarding the question of whether marijuana can

effectively be used medically. Fortunately, "the Court's holding neither struck down

Proposition 215 nor demanded that California bring criminal charges against it's citizens

who were using marijuana on the advice of their physicians"(Cohen,1).

Marijuana has been used as a medicine since it was first discovered. In the 17th and

18th centuries, marijuana was prescribed for "a wide variety of conditions, including

depression, cough, jaundice, inflammation, tumors, arthritis, gout, venereal disease,

incontinence, cramps, insomnia, epilepsy, and asthma"(Gahlinger,34). Between 1839

and 1900, over 100 medical studies on marijuana and it's effects or uses were published

and before 1941, canibis and it's extracts were sold as medicines in powder, tablet, and

liquid forms. Only in 1941 was canibis and all of it's extracts removed from the U.S.

Pharmacopoeia and the National Formulary, which contains all the recognized standards

for medications.

One of the factors used in determining drug scheduling by the DEA is the risk to public

health. If a drug has been classified as a Schedule I narcotic, it generally poses a threat

to public safety. However, marijuana has not been found to have "any physical peril

for users of the drug"(Miller, 18). In fact, when you consider it's "'therapeutic ratio',

the difference between the size of the dose needed for the desired effect and the size

that produces poisoning", you will find that it has no known ratio as yet(Miller, 19).

For that matter, a congressionally mandated study done by a conservative commission

appointed by President Nixon recommended that "possession of marihuana for personal

use would no longer be an offense" and even that "casual distribution of small amounts

of marihuana for no remuneration, or insignificant remuneration not involving profit,

would no longer be an offense"(Trebach,105). Even clergy members support the medical

marijuana issue, stating that "'This is about compassion for people" and that they "feel

compelled to support doctors who want to use whatever tools necessary to ease the pain

of the extremely sick"(Huffstutter, 1).

California is not the only state to have medical marijuana laws on the books. In total,

there are 26 states with such laws still in effect dating as far back as 1978. Washington

D.C. even has a medical use law which reschedules marijuana to Schedule V when used

for medicinal purposes. Schedule V contains drugs, such as Robitussin A-C, that have

low potential for abuse and accepted medical use, but may lead to limited dependence.

Almost all of the states laws allow medicinal use for cancer patients and other life

threatening illnesses, but California is the only state that expressly allows cultivation by

the patient or caregivers for medical use. Counties may set the limit of plants and weight

of dried marijuana for medicinal use, but if there is no set limit, they use California

defaults of 6 mature or 12 immature plants and 8 ounces of dried marijuana. Some

counties, such as Del Norte, allow as much as 99 plants and 1 pound of dried cannabis.

Only Humboldt County has no limit on the amount plants one can possess.

Some groups, such as NORML, a non profit members group, support the legalization

of marijuana for recreational as well as medicinal use. They believe that marijuana

could be California's cash crop and they estimate it would raise $1.5-$2.5 billion

dollars in tax revenue while saving approximately $150 million in arrests, trials, and

incarceration costs. In fact, the Los Angels NORML director, Bruce Margolin, ran

for governor in the 2003 recall election. His campaign platform, decreasing our states

debt by taking "California's No.1cash crop off of the black market and tax the sale and

distribution of Marijuana in the state"(Bruce).

While most people may not support the legalization of marijuana for recreational use,

a poll taken in 2003 revealed that 75% of adults in the U.S. are in favor of medical

marijuana. However, even though most of the public supports medicinal use, most

government officials and some researchers do not believe that marijuana is a viable

medicine. In fact, Special Assistant David Murray thinks medicinal marijuana "is a patent

medicine of the 19th century hawked by carnival barkers" and "Not only is smoked

marijuana not an effective medicine, but it is addictive, carcinogenic, damages the body's

respiratory, immune and reproductive systems, affects short-term memory and ability to

learn and is a 'gateway' to harder narcotics use"(Marshall).

However, according to Dr. Leo Hollister, the evidence of damage to the immune and

reproductive systems are contradictory in nature and that the studies that were closest to

actual clinical conditions created less compelling evidence. The immune suppression idea

was first brought up by the notorious Dr. Gabriel Nahas, but researchers in the Regan

administration failed to find conclusive evidence of this theory. Government experts

also agree that marijuana causes no permanent damage to either the male or female

reproductive systems.

As for it being a gateway drug, there is no scientific evidence to support these claims.

Many cultures throughout Asia and Africa have been using marijuana religiously,

medically, and recreationally and they "show no propensity for other drugs"(California

NORML). This theory took hold in the sixties, when marijuana became the recreational

drug of choice, but was refuted in the eighties when cocaine took old of America

and marijuana use declined. However, there is evidence that shows in the absence of

marijuana a user is more likely to turn to a harder substance or alcohol to get high.

Further more, marijuana does not cause a physical dependence and there is still some

debate as to whether or not it causes psychological dependence.

As far a marijuana not being an effective medicine, if this is the case, why do so many

researchers, doctors, and cancer specialists believe it does? Marijuana is not prescribed as

an antibiotic or anything like that. It is prescribed to patients who are in to much pain or

to nauseous to eat or even function in day to day situations. Chemotherapy tends to leave

patients with both a throbbing pain and nausea.(CC) This will prevent them from eating

which causes their immune system to weaken even more. Marijuana allows patients to

feel hungry and eat without forcing themselves too. It eases some pain with out the side

effects or chemical dependency of most modern pharmaceutical pain killers. In fact,

some medicinal users claim that cannabis is a safe, cheap, and effective alternative to the

usually nauseating medications prescribed for their particular ailments.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved clinical trials of a drug called Sativex,

which s a liquid that combines two of the most therapeutic compounds in marijuana.

Sativex is the second marijuana derived pharmaceutical drug created and tested by the

FDA. These drugs are to be used the same way medical marijuana is, however, they

supposedly limit the dangerous effects of canibis, those of getting high and smoking.

However, some are not convinced "that the therapeutic benefits of cannabis can always

be separated from its psychoactive effects"(Grinspoon). Many patients speak of feeling

better after they get high. If marijuana contributes to this mood elevation, should that

be taken away from a patient that is probably in need of it? For those who are worried

about the toxins that come with smoking, they can use a vaporizer, which frees the

cannabinoids from the plant without burning it or producing smoke.(AC)

Some feel that one day, cannabis will be seen as a wonder drug, just as penicillin was in

the 1940's. Just like penicillin, marijuana is nontoxic, has a wide range of uses, and would

be remarkably inexpensive if legalized. Even good quality, although illegal, marijuana

is cheaper than the synthetic versions the FDA is trying to pass. The only bonus to drugs

like Sativex over marijuana is that Sativex is completely legal.

The claim that Sativex doesn't cause intoxication, a main goal of the FDA, hinges on the

idea that patients will stick with the recommended dosage. The down side of this is that,

while marijuana takes effect almost immediately, Sativex does not, though it is much

more efficient than it's counter part, Marinol. In effect, Sativex could get a patient high if

they took more than the recommended dosage, just as cough syrup can get one drunk, if

more than the recommended dosage is ingested.

What all this seems to boil down to is an issue of when. Most of the adults in the U.S.

seem to agree with the legalization of marijuana, if not entirely, at least for medicinal

purposes. Most agree that it has therapeutic qualities and can be a life saver in the case of

AIDS and cancer patients, as well as treat a multitude of other symptoms. The only real

opposition seems to come from government officials. If medical marijuana were made

legal, it could increase tax revenues and the quality of life of many infirmed patients.(SB)

It made completely legal, and properly regulated, it could be a tremendous cash crop

for California, if not the whole U.S. and generate billions of dollars in revenue, which

would remove a lot of the debt that looms over this country like a storm cloud. Most of

the reasons for it being illegal are unfounded and even government appointed research

has recommended that possession not be a criminal offense. Many countries around the

world have loose if any marijuana laws and crime is no more rampant, psychosis no more

prevalent, than here. If it works for countries less powerful or developed than the U.S.

why can it not work here? Is America so much better than these countries that we must

force our infirmed to suffer unnecessarily? Why must we deny a cheap and effective

source of relief to those so desperately in need of a quality of life change? Our strict laws

turn dying, pain riddled patients into criminals or force them to a life of side effects, if

they can even take the prescribed medications.(VP) There is something seriously wrong

with a country that would deny relief to those in pain, an appetite to those to nauseas to

eat.

Why is the study of philosophy important? Philosophy is often highly regarded in academics. Why is it so important?

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People don't really study philosophy in the same way one might study another subject which has concrete information; rather philosophy is sort of a way of challenging one's assumptions about the way the world is. When one deliberately challenges one's own worldview, one can expand one's consciousness and at the same time lose one's ego. Realizing how often you're wrong about the way you perceive your world can be a humbling experience. When one can view the world and its events in a most consistent way one can act more readily in any given situation for the betterment of the world's condition.

-

People who study philosophy have the chance to learn think outside the box and communicate more effectively. Philosophy helps students learn how to see an idea from different perspectives. It helps you have more of an open mind. It generally teaches you to think.

Philosophy gives you a deep understanding of the world from various points of views. Those who study philosophy learn how to think critically and to analyze effectively. It helps to develop skills of critical and moral thinking. Philosophy also provides you with the perfect preparation for entrance exams for law, medicine, business, computer science, engineering and humanities. Philosophy offers math skills through logic, reasoning, and critical thinking. It also provides the student with excellent verbal and literary skills.

In short, Philosophy will help you become a more well rounded individual and will prepare you for college major entrance exams. It will also help you develop a better point of view on life, yourself, and the world around you.

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Philosophy, as its own discipline, is considered vital throughout academia because every field of study has its own underlying "philosophy of ________" as a starting point. The "philosophy of history" or the "philosophy of art" are of major importance to each discipline. 

Philosophy is "love of wisdom" and represents the rigorous, systematic, generalized study of essential concepts and ideas (existence and consciousness, origins + cosmology + cosmogony, mind, reason, language, and meaning, etc.). Many philosophers subdivide their work into 10 or 15 branches, such as logic, ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, etc. 

Ontology and epistemology very much underlie any systematic study of a subject matter because they define what a concept/idea IS, or its nature, and how we think we KNOW or can study/examine the existence and nature of any "thing." 

Esthetics (study of art and beauty, etc.) and ethics (what is right or good or of value, etc.) are general areas of inquiry that establish to some extent the usefulness or applicability or reach of other human behaviors. 

Philosophy, then provides the means (logic, reason, analysis) for us to evaluate the fundamental natures of what we think, how we know and understand, and whether concepts or ideas can be of service to individuals, groups, or even humanity.

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The Book That Never Was

Here's an interesting anecdote... this Wikipedia article is about a book that never existed, but was thought to be a bestseller because it got so much hype. The hoax started on the radio when a broadcaster urged his listeners to go and buy the book. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Libertine

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Learning Chinese

I believe it is important to learn a second language.  Preferably, this would start at a young age, like in most of Europe.  The fact that second language are put off until Middle School and sometimes even High School in America is simply deplorable.  Luckily, more dual language schools are being opened all the time, but there is still a long way to go.

Specifically for Chinese, there are a few good resources one can use for free!  Two of my personal favorites are popupchinese.com for podcasts ranging from beginner to advanced levels, you can get even more if you pay, but their free library is quite large and helpful, and the second is nciku.com which is a great dictionary.  It has a word of the day, a drawing application to look up characters you don't recognize, and a step by step stroke demonstration for all the characters.  You can also practice radicals, learn vocabulary, and utilize their other tools for free.

The best thing for learning any language however, is speaking it with other people, hopefully somebody who is fluent or near fluent.  This isn't always possible, but through some google searching, you can find a multitude of websites where you can chat with people who speak many languages for free to practice.  You can even chat to them in English to help them practice if you're feeling it.  Also, unfortunately this site doesn't offer Chinese yet, but it does have a lot of free language lessons.  Duolingo.com

Some people like to focus on writing characters, which is great, but I recommend beginners put most of their effort into learning vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar.  Writing is something you can always learn down the line, and is easier to learn once you can speak more conversationally.  Good luck to all who are learning a second language, until next time!

Shoutout to Mtg Headquarters

Hey all, just letting you all know to check out mtgheadquarters.com if you're interested in Magic: the Gathering.  One of their contributors mentioned our blog at the end of his article, so I thought I'd return the favor.

Funny Short Story Competition

Yet another chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card without spending any money!  Email your comedic short story to jjohnpotter@gmail.com -deadline is March 3rd at 8PM PST.  There is no maximum or minimum word count, just do whatever you think is best and still qualifies as a short story.  The winning story will be published on the blog, and if you lose and don't want your submission to be published here, simply specify in your submission email that that is your wish.  Good luck to everybody that enters, and email at jjohnpotter@gmail.com if you have any questions or comments.

Pauper Musical Elves

Pauper is a nice way to get into constructed Magic casually and for little cost.  Don't be fooled though, commons can still make a very powerful deck, especially when there is hardly any banned list.

This might not be the best deck out there, but it is indeed fun.  Check out Musical Elves!

Current Projects

Right now we are working to raise money to donate to Bay Area public schools so that any schools that have had to cut classes will hopefully be able to reinstate some of the arts like choir, band, and painting.  We are also raising a small amount of money to fund local artists, more specifically, right now we are raising money to help a small production group create an independent film, more details to come about that!

Beard/Hair Competition for Charity

The rules are quite simple, send us pictures of your beards to jjohnpotter@gmail.com and we will post all of the entries to reddit.com/r/beards, the users there will vote on the best beard and the winner will be emailed a code for a $25 Amazon gift card!  Competition starts today and we will be accepting entries up until March 1st at 7pm PST.

Don't worry ladies, you are not excluded!  We will be running a concurrent competition for who has the coolest hairstyle, same prize, same email.  The subreddit will be reddit.com/r/fancyfollicles for this competition.

Make sure to hold up a sign with the date on in to prove it is a recent picture, thanks for reading and good luck to all!  Remember to tell your friends, and donate if you'd like to support us.  No donation or entry fee required.

Benefits of playing Magic: the Gathering

Magic: the Gathering, or just Magic as it is commonly referred to, is a trading card game geared towards teenagers and adults.  The setting is fantasy, and new cards are coming out all the time.  At first glance, it might seem like a waste of time, childish, or excessively nerdy (not that there is anything wrong with nerds).  There are tons of benefits to playing Magic though, not the least of which include improvement in social skills, critical and creating thinking, strategy, mathematics, and reading.  The learning curve is a bit high, but in general it is quite easy to learn the basics of the game and learn as you go.  Many groups believe that this game is inherently evil or bad for youth, but the reality is quite the opposite.  I remember playing Magic at my friend's house almost every week, and his dad would always joke that there are a million other things we could be doing that were bad, so he was glad we were at home playing cards instead.  Displacing one's time and keeping them out of trouble is not the main benefit though, the main benefits are increased socialization, improvements in decision making, and self-esteem.

Playing Magic requires everybody to interact with each other, it is one of the key parts of the game that has made it popular.  Within the framework of a Magic: the Gathering game, people can discuss a wide range of topics as the game progresses.  Kitchen table magic -simply put, casual play- is the best example of this, friends gather around and hang out for hours while playing, sometimes the cards come second while socializing is the real goal.  Casual games are usually spur of the moment games at the school lunch table, while on lunch break, or a planned event where you invite a handful of friends over to join you.  If you are talking about the game itself, there are thousands of cards to discuss, many deck archetypes to debate about, and limitless possibilities when it comes to making your own decks.  Do you want to build a fiercely competitive deck and win at all costs?  Do you want a bear themed deck filled with nothing but bears and spells with art of bears on them?  Perhaps you want to make a multiplayer deck that isn't aimed at winning, but at helping everybody else out along the way?  You can use your creativity to try almost anything that you desire, and new options are coming out with each new set.  When you are playing with strangers, it is common to introduce yourself at the start of the game, and with time many of those people become your friends.  This same phenomenon is found in other games, like Bridge for example, which is famous for helping people meet.  It is where the CEO of Goldman Sachs made most of his early connections, and Magic works in much the same way.

Now to the meat and potatoes of the benefits of Magic, critical thinking and decision making.  Magic is a game with hundreds of choices.  Most of them are small ones, but over time the decisions you make develop the outcome of the game drastically.  At the professional level, it is not uncommon to seriously think about whether or not you should attack with one creature for a few minutes, even if it is almost certainly best to do so.  This is because every choice matters, and you have to think about what cards the opponent might have hidden in their hand, what they might draw, and what they might decide to do in the next few turns ahead.  You also have to decide in between games (most are 2/3) what cards you will take out of your deck and which ones you will bring in.  This is called sideboarding, you maindeck must be at least 60 cards, while your sideboard is 15.  In between games you can bring in different cards to your deck that are especially good against your current opponent.  Choosing what to put in your sideboard and how to alter your deck in between games is one of the most important skills one must learn to succeed competitively in Magic: the Gaterhing.  Many cards and decks themselves are hard to use as well.  Cabal Therapy, a popular and powerful card used in many tournament decks, says that you must name a card and your opponent has to reveal their hand and discard all cards with that name.  To use this effectively you must have a pretty good idea of what your opponent might have in his deck, based off of only a few cards that you might have seen thus far.  There are many other examples of this, but the point is this:  Magic is a diverse and complicated game, and playing it requires the exercise of critical thinking and problem solving, since it is very rare any two games are the same, thinking on your feet is a requirement to win.

Hopefully this short article will remove some of the stigma associated with the game, and even better, will encourage more people to try it out.  I am confident that you will be glad that you did.

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Class Size

People usually think that smaller class sizes are always better for classroom environments, however, this is not the case at all.  In Malcolm Gladwell's book, David and Goliath he explains why small classes can be just as harmful as large ones.

Essentially, students in small classes don't have as many peers to bounce ideas off of or get help from.  A smaller class can more easily be dominated by one or two troublemakers, the teacher can't use the same methods he or she does with a large class to effectively teach a small one, and students feel like the group is too intimate and it is difficult to maintain the level of autonomy in learning that they want.  The magic numbers seem to hove around 18-24, but anything from 18-28 or so is probably acceptable, depending on the teacher.

Speaking from personal experience, I've had classes with over 30 children in it and I thought it was great, but not everything works for everybody, and the teacher probably thought it was pretty hectic.  On the other hand, I've been in classes like Aca Deca, and self-learning classes that had less than ten people.  It was by far the most disorganized and out of control classes I have ever been in.  Students did anything they wanted to do, we talked about anything almost whenever we wanted to, and one or two kids did indeed run the show it seemed.

My point is that in America, we have spent billions of dollars on trying to reduce class sizes, because intuitively it sounds like the best option.  It even looks great on paper!  All we have really done though is reduce class sizes to our detriment, both because it cost a ton of money, and because students suffer.  What we should really do is increase teacher salary and increase class sizes to be at least 24 students or so.  This would attract good teaching talent to schools that need it, and the larger classes (although let's be honest, most schools have more than 24 students per class) would help the students.  Increasing the number of students and reducing the number of teachers in districts that can do this allow shifting funds towards schools that actually need a reduction in class size.  Most immediately, schools with 40 or more students in classrooms would need help, but anything around 35 could probably use a reduction.

This is simply one of the counter-intuitive solutions that most Americans disagree with, but if we gave it a try, I am confident that it would make education better for both students and teachers.

Learning how to Learn

This isn't necessarily common knowledge, but the school system as it is setup now in America is based on what that was dedicated to making good factory workers out of children.  Mass education in large classrooms, getting assigned repetitive tasks and learning to follow authority figures without question.  This form of education is quite outdated and needs some serious reform.

Many kids today don't learn how to study and explore new things on their own.  They simply memorize facts and figures out of books and do busywork all week at school until they finally get a diploma and are told to go out into a job that makes them miserable (at least that is the common story).  We need to focus more on teaching kids how to help themselves, how to argue for and against their opinions coherently, and how to research professionally and learn about anything that they might want to learn about.  Currently we are stuck in a rut with our education system, it doesn't matter how much money you pour into a broken system if it is still broken, the funds will simply slip through the cracks and amount to very little positive change.

In higher education, people are taught more effectively, and often are taught how to think for themselves and how to think critically, but this something that can always be improved upon, especially in somewhere as far behind as America.  We need to stop assuming that our way is the best and look to other countries who have great results and emulate their style of learning.  Many schools have significantly less hours than American ones, for example in Germany, yet they perform higher on tests and their children have a high rate of graduation.  The Arts and Education Foundation does not lobby or get involved in politics, but we can steer individual schools in the right direction.  The key for changing the system on a large scale is to get your community involved in demanding that schools teach our children more efficiently.  Hopefully the change will come someday soon, but it won't happen without some serious effort.

20% Time

Many of you have probably heard of Google's 20% time.  For those of you that haven't, here is the basic premise.  For 20% of your work day, you can do whatever you want, be it a group project or just by yourself.  It's a chance to be creative and to show what you can do with your own initiative.  It's been hugely successful, spawning many of Google's core products like Gmail and Google AdSense.

This same approach, I think, would be hugely successful in education.  Give students one class in which they can study anything they want.  Have them layout an education plan to be approved by a teacher, or have dozens of pre-approved paths that can be developed as time goes on, there are many ways to go about it.  The key is to give more choice to the students about what they learn.  Perhaps 20% is too much to ask for, but I would argue that at least 10% of a student's time devoted to something that they are undoubtedly interested in, would be quite valuable.

Many companies have been quite successful with this model, and I think it would be worth giving it a shot with kids in K-12.

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Acer DA220HQL 21.5-Inch All-in-One Touchscreen Desktop (Black)

As with all devices, this one comes with some pros and cons, however, for it's price I think it is one of the best touchscreens out there right now. The monitor is great, the colors come through extremely well, and in general the quality is better than I expected. I enjoy the touchscreen, it works fine and there isn't much else to say about it, the mouse and keyboard are also up to par. However, you might consider getting a bigger mouse if smaller ones bother you, or if you have rather large hands. Luckily it is a touch screen so the mouse is optional! For the price, 1GB RAM is quite good as is its processor. Now for some cons: The monitor is built on quite a small budget, so some graininess does come through, but for the price it is hard to beat. There are some apps that won't even install, and others still that will install but aren't formatted to the screen size correctly. The vast majority work just fine though. If you're on a budget, then this is the All-in-One touchscreen to get, otherwise look at the $400-$500 range for higher quality models.

Our Mission

     The Arts and Education Foundation is devoted quite simply, to furthering education, with a focus on the arts specifically.  Across the country, schools are grossly underfunded for classes like art, band, languages, choir, and other similar classes.  These classes are believed to be unimportant compared to math and science, but in most cases they are just as, if not more, important for students who want to pursue careers that require a broad education.
   
     Education is supposed to be interesting, and for many students this is very difficult without having the arts to supplement their math and science classes.  Knowing how to draw, sing, perform, and express yourself in general can bring much happiness to one's life, and also be useful skills for future jobs and for applying to colleges.  We plan on bringing quality education to everybody that we can, and hope that you can help us to do just that.

Succinctly, our mission is to support the arts and education of people all over America.

Surface Pro

For people who want to know, I think it’s a great tablet and I have been using it very often during Superjail! season four production. I use it for sketching/thumbing/boarding on the go. The most important thing I’m looking for in a tablet is a natural drawing experience/interface. I use a Wacom Cintiq to make Superjail!, which is great in my opinion, but obviously that’s a big and powerful non-mobile workstation I can’t take with me.

If you download the Wacom driver for the Surface tablet, the pen pressure/sensitivity is great and I’ve had no latency issues—meaning you can draw very quick and fast which I like to do—and the line doesn’t lag behind the actual pen in your hand. This was a problem I had with previous tablets/laptops.

Prior to this, I owned a Toshiba Portege tablet PC, and used it often to thumb/board during season one. The pressure sensitivity on it kind of sucked and so did the speed, but I would still use it as an option when not in the office or out of town. After season one, I stopped using it. (It was also very heavy and huge by today’s standards…haha). I would only work at the office or home and if I thumbed outside of work, I would do it on paper and then re-draw it in Flash which was kind of a pain in the ass. But when boarding, I like to get away from the office sometimes. I love storyboarding in cafes or bars so I can let my mind wander, people watch, get ideas, etc. I work so often I find a change of workspace inspiring and necessary.

As far as ‘negatives,’ I honestly don’t have any. My biggest hurdle was getting used to Windows 8 as I have a Mac at work and still run Windows Vista at home. I wasn’t used to the ’tiles’ system that is the interface of Surface, but it was just a matter of getting used to it. There is an automatic brightness sensor so when I was drawing sometimes my hand would cover the tablet and the screen brightness would change, but I just disabled that setting so it’s not an issue.

I haven’t and don’t think I would use the Surface for full animation because of its screen size (being a tablet) but I wouldn’t really want to animate in a public space anyways. I would want to work in the quiet of my room or studio. But I do really like storyboarding/thumbnailing in active cafes/bars/even the subway-I don’t know why but I get really good ideas in the subway—and for that, the Surface is great. I boarded a huge chunk of the premiere of Superjail! season 4 on the airplane to San Diego Comic-Con. I was able to email the .FLA file to my storyboard team right on the plane directly from the tablet—super convenient and allows me to get work done, send it to the storyboard artists and keep production flowing while I’m away. The battery life also impressed me—better than my iPhone which I seem to have to charge twice a day.

I think iPads look really nice, but they don’t have the pen driver support, only those blunt ‘stylus’ type pen interfaces that I can’t stand. Also, the iPad can only run apps, not true software like Flash which I need to make Superjail! I know there are more and more tablets on the market these days so there are probably going to be lots of new options.

The Microsoft guys approached me and let me play with it, I loved it and agreed to do the video. Also I have to say that I am really sick of Mac constantly updating their OS. It’s really annoying, and for some reason I find Flash runs better on PC. My PC at home has NEVER crashed making this show—not once! But the Macs at work sometimes do crash when we have a really heavy file. Flash really wan’t designed to do this kind of animation, but that’s a whole other discussion.

So yeah, for directors and storyboard artists, or anyone who wants to sketch digitally away from their workstation with a really sensitive natural pen interface, the Surface has worked out really great for me and I love using it.

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

”You mean there’s a catch?”
“Sure there’s a catch, “ Doc Daneeka replied. “Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn’t really crazy.”
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” He observed.
“It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.



Originally Catch-22 was Catch-18, but because Leon Uris was publishing a novel called Mila-18 that same year Joseph Heller’s agent decided the title needed to be changed so as to not confuse the book buying public. Also given that 22 is a double 11 they liked the way it represented the many déjà vu moments that occur in the book. The East Coast publishing intelligentsia really embraced the book even though there were doubts if it would ever gain traction with the American public. 

It did.

I understand the frustration that publishers feel with the American book buying public. They have all been scorched by a book they felt should have sold by the wheelbarrow only to have it crash and burn with the majority of the first printing sold off to a remainder company. Sometimes a book needs a lightning strike in the form of Oprah or a school banning the book (thank-you Strongsville, OH), but for Heller all he needed was the 1960s. 

The book is set during WWII, the last good war according to everyone from Tom Brokaw to the school janitor at Phillipsburg High School. Fat novels glorifying the war, some extraordinarily good, were hitting bookstores at a fast clip from the late 1940s on. By the time Catch-22 came out in 1961 the world had changed. So those people who bought this book who thought they were in for another “weren’t we great” novel about World War Two were in for a shock. A typical reaction was:

WTF????

Some thought it was irreverent, but there were a growing group of people who thought it was among the best American novels they had ever read. Both reactions helped juice the novel and sales began to climb. 


Joseph Heller in uniform.

At the tender age of 19 in 1942 Joseph Heller joined the U.S. Army Air Corp. By 1944 he found himself on the Italian Front as a B-25 Bombardier. He flew 60 missions most of which he categorized as milk runs; these were flight missions that encounter no or very little anti-aircraft artillery or enemy fighters. Heller admits that his disillusionment with the war in Korea colored the novel. It gives me the shakes to think how different the novel would be if he had published the book in 1951 instead of 1961. Little did he know how prophetic his novel would be regarding the Vietnam War. 

Yossarian has reached the end of his rope. He has flown the required number of combat missions several times, but each time Colonel Cathcart keeps raising the number of missions required to go home. A similar circumstance plagued Hawkeye Pierce and his fellow doctors in the Korean War based TV series M*A*S*H. The pressure of thousands of people he doesn’t even know and hundreds he does know trying to kill him is just too much for him to bear. As he becomes more and more insane(sane) he becomes more and more qualified to fly combat missions as far as the military is concerned. He comes up with various ailments to keep him in the hospital. He shows up to receive his war medal naked except for a pair of moccasins. He finally refuses to fly any more missions and begins parading around the camp walking backwards. This does start to foment rebellion among his fellow flyers and drives Colonel Cathcart to distraction. 

”Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian’s fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.”

Heller surrounds Yossarian with a wonderful cast of detailed characters of which I will only be able to mention a few. 

Lieutenant Nately is one of Yossarian’s best friends, a trust fund baby with red, white, and blue blood running through his veins. He is a good looking kid and could have any woman he wanted, but he falls in love with an Italian prostitute who begrudgingly sleeps with him when he pays for sex with her, but would rather he just disappeared. He has this great discussion with her “107” year old pimp. 

”Italy is one of the least prosperous nations on earth. And the Italian fighting man is probably second to all. And that’s exactly why my country is doing so well in this war while your country is doing so poorly.”
Nately guffawed with surprise...”But Italy was occupied by the Germans and is now being occupied by us. You don’t call that doing very well, do you?”
“But of course I do.” exclaimed the old man cheerfully. “The Germans are being driven out, and we are still here. In a few years you will be gone, too, and we will still be here. You see, Italy is really a very poor and weak country, and that’s what makes us so strong. Italian soldiers are not dying any more. But American and German soldiers are. I call that doing extremely well.”

Nately continues to be the straight man for the old man as they discuss the absurdity of risking one’s life for their country.

”There is nothing so absurd about risking your life for your country.” he (Nately) declared.
“Isn’t there?”asked the old man. “What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can’t all be worth dying for.”
“Anything worth living for,” said Nately, “is worth dying for.”
“And anything worth dying for,” answered the sacrilegious old man. “is certainly worth living for.”

Milo Minderbinder is in charge of the mess at the U.S. Army Corps base. As he learns more and more about how goods are moved around the globe he begins a business of supply and demand (war profiteering). He becomes the ultimate capitalist with no allegiance to any country. He trades with the enemy and as part of contract negotiations he also warns the Germans once of an impending attack even to the point of guiding anti-artillery against American planes and in another case bombs his own base to fulfill another contract. The absurdity of his position is that he is too important to the American high command to get in trouble for any of these acts of treason. He tries to explain one of his more successful schemes to Yossarian. 

”I don’t understand why you buy eggs for seven cents apiece in Malta and sell them for five cents.”
“I do it to make a profit.”
“But how can you make a profit? You lose two cents an egg.”
“But I make a profit of three and a quarter cents an egg by selling them for four and a quarter cents an egg to the people in Malta I buy them from for seven cents an egg. Of course, I don’t make the profit. the syndicate makes the profit. And everybody has a share.”
Yossarian felt he was beginning to understand. “And the people you sell the eggs to at four anda quarter cents a piece make a profit of two and three quarter cents apiece when they sell them back to you at seven cents apiece. Is that right? Why don’t you sell the eggs directly to you and eliminate the people you buy them from?”
“Because I’m the people I buy them from.” Milo explained. “I make a profit of three and a quarter cents apiece when I sell them to me and a profit of two and three quarter cents apiece when I buy them back from me. That’s a total profit of six cents and egg. I lose only two cents an egg when I sell them to the mess halls at five cents apiece, and that’s how I can make a profit buying eggs for seven cents apiece and selling them for five cents apiece.

Hungry Joe keeps meeting the flight standards time and time again only to have his paperwork take too long to process before the flight standards have been raised again. He packs and then he unpacks. He is a fat, pervert who convinces women to take their clothes off to be photographed by telling them that he works for Life Magazine and will put them on the cover. Unfortunately the photographs never turn out. Ironically he did work as a photographer for Life Magazine before the war. 

Women do play a role in this book mostly as objects of lust. Heller has these wonderful, creative descriptions of them. 

”She would have been perfect for Yossarian, a debauched, coarse, vulgar, amoral, appetizing slattern whom he had longed for and idolized for months. She was a real find. She paid for her own drinks, and she had an automobile, an apartment and a salmon-colored cameo ring that drove Hungry Joe clean out of his senses with its exquisitely carved figures of a naked boy and girl on a rock.”

And then there is a nurse that brings Yossarian nearly to his knees with desire. 

”Yossarian was sick with lust and mesmerized with regret. General Dreedle’s nurse was only a little chubby, and his senses were stuffed to congestion with the yellow radiance of her hair and the unfelt pressure of her soft short fingers, with the rounded untasted wealth of her nubile breast in her Army-pink shirt that was opened wide at the the throat and with the rolling, ripened triangular confluences of her belly and thighs in her tight, slick forest-green garbardine officer’s pants. He drank her in insatiably from head to painted toenail. He never wanted to lose her. ‘Ooooooooooooh,’ he moaned again, and this time the whole room rippled at his quavering, drown-out cry.”.

You will probably need to google the next one. 

”He enjoyed Nurse Sue Ann Druckett’s long white legs and supple, callipygous ass.”

Paradoxes abound even when Heller describes a character he will have countering characteristics like she was plain, but pretty or he was handsome, but ugly. Aren’t we all a sum of those characteristics anyway?

Linux at High Schools

Around a year ago, a school in the southeast of England, Westcliff High School for Girls Academy (WHSG), began switching its student-facing computers to Linux, with KDE providing the desktop software. The school's Network Manager, Malcolm Moore, contacted us at the time. Now, a year on, he got in touch again to let us know how he and the students find life in a world without Windows.

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Steve: Hi Malcolm, thanks for agreeing to the interview. Could you tell us a bit about the school and your role there?

Malcolm: Westcliff High School for Girls Academy is a selective Grammar School with a Sixth Form of about 340 students. It was founded in 1920 as a co-educational school in Victoria Avenue, Southend, and moved to its present site in 1931. Since then the school has grown to its present size of around 1095 girls.

The IT Support department consists of three staff: myself, Paul Antonelli, and Jenny Lidbury. My role is that of Network Manager. The IT Support department covers provisioning and support of all IT-related equipment within the school. This includes 200 teacher machines, 400+ student machines, 33 IMacs, 100+ laptops, and a few Android tablets. We also support all the multimedia devices such as projectors, interactive whiteboards, and TVs, etc.

Steve: Whose idea was it to switch computers over to Linux? What were the reasons for doing so?

Malcolm: We have used Linux as the OS for our email server, VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) and website for a while since I had used it before at my previous position in the financial industry.

It was my idea to move the students' PCs to Linux as it was becoming increasingly obvious that with the size, cost, and complexity of IT increasing seemingly exponentially, ultimately something had to give and professional pride would not let it be the quality of the systems we support. We tested a small set-up of 60 machines and got feedback from the students, adjusted it a bit and then tried again and so on. Once we had gone through this loop a number of times with Red Hat/Fedora and SUSE/openSUSE set-ups and we were satisfied, I put my proposal to the Senior Leadership Team.

The motivation was initially both cost and philosophical, in that, even in an outstanding school, funds are always going to be limited (politicians don't seem to get the saying: 'If you think education is expensive, try ignorance'). The cost of using Windows is high but not always obvious, Windows carries a lot of baggage that bumps the cost up considerably over a Linux environment. The philosophical angle was probably the philosophy of pragmatism.

We wanted to offer the best IT systems and education possible with the funds available. Money spent on essentially promoting Microsoft Windows and Office to students can be better spent on old-fashioned things like teachers and actual education.

Subsequently and fortuitously, the UK government threw out the old ICT syllabus, which was based largely on teaching students how to use Microsoft Office, and told schools to go for a more computer studies-based syllabus, which meant that we were in a position to hit the ground running, so to speak.

Steve: Was there any resistance to the idea and how was this overcome?

Malcolm: Surprisingly, very little. The Senior Leadership Team grilled me in two long meetings which was fun!

Once you actually take a step back from the misconception that computers = Windows, and actually seriously think about it, the pros clearly outweigh the cons. The world is changing very quickly. There is a survey that reports in 2000, 97% of computing devices had Windows installed, but now with tablets and phones, etc., Windows is only on 20% of computing devices, and in the world of big iron, Linux reigns supreme. We specialize in science and engineering and want our students to go on to do great things like start the next Google or collapse the universe at CERN. In those environments, they will certainly need to know Linux.

Steve: What choices did you make for the software and why? Was any new hardware needed?

Malcolm: We started out with the basic theory that the students had to like the interface, so 'pretty is a feature' was required for the workstations. For IT staff, stability is practically everything for the servers. Whilst I know there are many people who have favorite distributions, I only really know the RPM-based ones. If we had more resources, we could have looked at more, but we only tried Red Hat/Fedora and SUSE/openSUSE combinations. In the end, the SUSE/openSUSE won because of their KDE software support. Firstly, we did not want the change to be too much for students to handle and KDE's Plasma can be made to look very familiar. Secondly, during our testing, we encouraged students to try both KDE Plasma and GNOME. Plasma was by far the winner in terms of user acceptance. [The final software choice was openSUSE 12.2 and Plasma Desktop 4.10 - Ed].

As far as the workstations go, no new hardware was required. One of our main reasons to go to Linux was that it runs well on older hardware. The usual merry-go-round of replacing 400 student machines every three or four years is a horrendous cost.

Many schools just simply can't afford that in these days of austerity. With the performance we have now, I intend to run these machines until they fall to bits! I would suggest to anyone however that they make sure they have a good network before embarking on this.

Steve: How did the switch-over go? Were there technical problems and how were they overcome?

Malcolm: The switch-over was done during the summer holiday of 2012. At that point we encountered no significant technical issues, although that isn't to say we didn't have any later!

Steve: Was there any software missing compared to the old systems?

Malcolm: We currently have students running Linux and staff running Windows 7. If there were a SIMS (Schools Information Management System) client for Linux, converting the whole school could easily have been considered. As it stands, that could have easily been an overreach. Nothing is missing as far as educational software for Linux, but we have retained a couple of Windows applications which we run under WINE so that students with work in progress can move slowly to alternative applications.

One thing that is interesting is the use of the Raspberry Pi and the suchlike in schools. The Pi team stated that one advantage of using the Pi is that students can experiment without destroying the school or family PCs. With Linux, students can experiment now.

Our ICT department is already teaching programming to students from year seven [around age 11], and in our environment, the worst thing they can do is crash their own account. Even if they completely destroy their area, it can be restored in minutes and will not affect the next person using the machine.

Steve: Did you contact KDE or openSUSE for assistance? If so, how was the response?

Malcolm: I have frequently contacted both KDE and openSUSE through the forums and bugzilla sites; both were exceedingly helpful. openSUSE forums can be a bit hostile at times when others think the questions are poorly worded or not well thought out. This, happily, is not the case in KDE forums where everyone has been very polite and helpful. In openSUSE's defense, some of the questions I posted were not done well. However, as I said before, there are only three of us and sometimes RTFM isn't an option.

There just aren't enough hours in the day. If I can post something and get an answer even if it seems dumb to others, it is a great help. If we had to learn everything about Linux, this project would never have happened, we would still be RTFM! Despite being called an idiot occasionally, we got good working answers to all our questions, so I can thoroughly recommend the forums even if it is necessary to be a bit thick-skinned at times.

Steve: What do the students, parents, and staff think of the change?

Malcolm: Younger students accept it as normal. Older students can be a little less flexible. There are still a few that are of the view that I can get rid of Microsoft Word when I can pry it from them. Staff are the same (although it is surprisingly not age-related). Some are OK and some hate it. Having said that, an equal number hate Windows 7 and nobody liked Windows 8. I think the basic problem is that Windows XP is a victim of its own success. It works fairly well from a user point of view, it's been around practically forever, and people don't like change, even some students, oddly.

Once we decided to go ahead, a special newsletter was sent out to all parents. We probably had less than half a dozen who disagreed, maintaining that learning Office was a more useful skill. Whilst I accept their views, I would argue that an 11 year old student starting with us in September 2014 will probably not reach the job market until 2024 or there about. What will Office 2024 look like? Your guess is as good as mine, but good basic skills and a logical and analytical way of dealing with computers will be good for a lifetime.

Steve: One year on, what worked and what didn't? What would you do differently or advise another school to do differently?

Malcolm: It would have been nice to say it all worked perfectly, but it didn't. The first half term was terrible. The primary problem was system speed and particularly logging into KDE Plasma. Our tests only had 60 or so machines in use as it was difficult to round up enough students at lunchtime and after school to really thrash the system. Plus, while we were testing, we were still having to maintain the 400 student Windows XP machines.

The bottom line is that Linux will run well on an old tin box, but if you have LDAP authentication and NFS home directories—as you certainly will have in a school or business environment, you must have a gigabit network. It will run with 100Mb, but it will be an unpleasant experience as we discovered to our cost. To that end, we had to replace about eight switches to bring our whole network up to gigabit everywhere (OK, it was planned to happen anyway, but I would have rather done it at my leisure!).

Additionally some things in KDE software do not lend themselves well to having NFS home directories, although I know it has been addressed to some extent in later versions. We now have several scripts that we run on our servers that force some KDE options to take the load of our network Once we had worked all this out and fixed it over the next half term holiday things quieted down a lot thankfully.

Steve: How could KDE make such a switch easier?

Malcolm: Documentation! You can configure KDE in every way imaginable using the GUI, but admins need to set up defaults for all users. The openSUSE defaults are OK for home or stand-alone users, but they need a bit of adjustment in a school. In the end we did it by taking a basic machine, making a change and then going through the dot files to see what had been affected (this and bothering Ben Cooksley in the KDE forums). It was hard work! The problem here—and I'm not sure there is an easy answer—is that with Linux, and now to some extent with Windows, the technology moves so fast that documentation is out of date before it's printed or even written in some cases.

Steve: Which applications (KDE or otherwise) have been particularly impressive? In which areas are applications lacking?

Malcolm: With the exception of about half a dozen students who are using GNOME, everybody loves the fact that now they can configure their desktops and applications. Most admins lock down Windows as it is fairly easy for people, particularly students, to butcher Windows.We have taken the view that we want to get back to a PC being a personal computer, so students can configure it any way they like as it gives a sense of ownership of their desktop. We have restrictions on configuring a machine inappropriately or in a way that is detrimental to work. Students generally get one desktop reset before we will 'have words'. Allowing this is a novel idea in schools. In the beginning, some of the desktops were configured to destruction! Now that the novelty has worn off the desktops are more sane, and we haven't had to reset an account back to a more tasteful blue in months. In this respect, it is a great success as students are now taking responsibility for their work environment and how they achieve tasks rather than be told, "Here is a generic Windows and Office. Use that."

Steve: Any other comments or observations on the experience?

Malcolm: Has it given me sleepless nights, yes. Has it nearly driven me insane, yes. Would I do it again... in an instant!

Steve: Thank you very much and best of luck in the future!

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The example of Westcliff High School for Girls Academy gives us plenty to think about. Linux, with KDE software, can clearly work in such an environment, but there are still challenges in deployment and getting used to a new system. Malcolm's experiences underline the importance of the KDE forums in welcoming and supporting new users to bring free software to ever larger audiences.