Thursday, February 23, 2006

Lets try this just as a refresher

Integrating Quotes

Works Cited

Email from Barbara Gilbert

Hi Dan,
Cragg and I were in China last year and saw some of their 7 million acres of apples
(Washington State has about 150,000 acres) and met plenty of farmers and marketers
as well as US trade officials in Beijing and Shanghai
--learned that 70% of WalMart merchandise is made in China--but that is not even considered in
the US /China trade deficit because it is a US company--
& met many ambitious 20- somethings
who are adept in English and very well suited to competing and winning at anything.
(With 1 acre of apples a family of three can survive and have a TV too ---
China has already completely taken over the market in some parts of Asia --markets that Washington
State dominated only a few years ago)
The folks we met were highly disciplined, highly intelligent, focussed, motivated and articulate.
In 1987 we took our boys (when they were 6 and 10) on a Sabbatical and visitied and worked on farms in Southeast Asia (Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, India, China), including Bangalore, now considered the 'Silicon Valley' of India.
No one in the world is waiting for Americans to get over our drug habits, get off the couch, figure out what we're doing etc!! They are flat out competing!
Good for you to teach Friedman.
And let your students know, imagination (and hard work) is required in this world (p.469)!!
The least helpful approaches, in my opinion are whining, suing ourselves out of business,
or finding an enemy everywhere (labeled variously).
In our travels we have found GREAT people everywhere who are more inclined toward friendship than anything.

Outline and Organization notes

These are not paragraphs, but sections. Each Roman Numeral might include multiple paragraphs.


I. Introduction/Background and thesis

a. Hook the reader

b. Tell the story behind your topic

c. Connect it to Globalization 3.0, Flatism etc.

d. Give us your opinion on the topic in one or two sentences (thesis)

II. Side one—represent their ideas as clearly and evenly as possible. Each side will probably require several paragraphs—one paragraph for each of their main ideas.

a. Topic sentence

b. Support and connect to thesis

c. Support and connect to thesis

d. Transition

III. Side two

a. Topic sentence

b. Support and connect to thesis

c. Support and connect to thesis

d. Transition

IV. What does Friedman have to say about the topic?

a. This might not be a separate section, but could be worked into one of the two sides.

b. How does the topic relate to the lessons we learn in TWIF?

c. Some of this will have to be drawn from what his GENERAL IDEAS are.

V. Conclusion

a. Restate thesis

b. End with powerful echo—think about how you started and return there?


What is the best order? Usually, your best point goes last. Your second best point goes first. So...it depends on the strength of your case, the strength of the case against and what you think will be the best strategy to convince the reader. It also depends on whether or not Friedman agrees with you.
Here are some options--

Intro

The side you agree with

The side you disagree with

Why that side is wrong

Friedman

Conclusion


Intro

The side you disagree with

Why that side is wrong

The side you agree with

Friedman

Conclusion


Intro

Friedman

The side you agree with

The side you disagree with

Why that side is wrong

Conclusion

Lesson Plan Day 31

1. NPR on Port Controversy and on call centers
2. Time for you to work on rough drafts and ask me questions
3. Distribute Rough Drafts for Peer Review over the weekend.
4. Homework:
Draft 2 due Next Thursday BOP. Work on what you know needs work.
Peer Review Due Monday BOP.
Ag. Panel Tuesday, 12-1 ish.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Pro Minutemen site with pictures

From a Minute Men blog


Pro Minute Men site

In response to: Photos Just In: Washington State

We live in "litte Mexico" AKA the Yakima Valley, Washington. Towns like Sunnyside, Mabton, Granger, Toppenish, and Wapato, WA, are 85% to 95% Mexican. A great percentage are ILLEGALS who harvest in summers but are on welfare programs all year long. These are folks who may slip over a Southwest U.S. border, but actually settle up north here. On a personal level, one can't live here and not grow to love many of them. Some, however, are mean, nasty sonsabitches who regularly have been killing among themselves and are starting to kill white folks (see http://home.earthlink.net/~info23skidoo/webdocs. Thoroughly check out this website and see the problems we're having with "Latino" crime. Those who aren't into drug dealing are hired by local agri-business corporations and large propietor-owned ag businesses. If there are any projects for which we can volunteer in Eastern Washington, please give us a heads up. We've got cameras, binoculars, cell phones and walkie-talkies---toys we can use if needed in the effort. We're also pretty good at research and reporting if that's handy.
Permalink 01/15/06 @ 17:48

Sunday, February 19, 2006

China and Yahoo

The New York Times

February 19, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist

China's Cyberdissidents and the Yahoos at Yahoo

Suppose that Anne Frank had maintained an e-mail account while in hiding in 1944, and that the Nazis had asked Yahoo for cooperation in tracking her down. It seems, based on Yahoo's behavior in China, that it might have complied.

Granted, China is not remotely Nazi Germany. But when members of Congress pilloried executives of Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Cisco Systems at a hearing about their China operations on Wednesday, there were three important people who couldn't attend. They were Shi Tao, Li Zhi and Jiang Lijun, three Chinese cyberdissidents whom Yahoo helped send to prison for terms of 10 years, 8 years and 4 years, respectively.

Only Mr. Shi, a Chinese journalist, has gotten much attention. But Chinese court documents in each case say that Yahoo handed over information that was used to help convict them. We have no idea how many more dissidents are also in prison because of Yahoo.

It's no wonder that there's an Internet campaign to boycott Yahoo, at www.booyahoo.blogspot.com. But it's a mistake to think of all the American companies as equal sinners, for Google appears to have done nothing wrong at all. Here's my take on the four companies:

Yahoo sold its soul and is a national disgrace. It is still dissembling, and nobody should touch Yahoo until it provides financially for the families of the three men it helped lock up and establishes annual fellowships in their names to bring Web journalists to America on study programs.

Microsoft has also been cowardly, but nothing like Yahoo. Microsoft responded to a Chinese request by recently shutting down the outspoken blog of Michael Anti (who now works for the New York Times Beijing bureau). Microsoft also censors sensitive words in the Chinese version of its blog-hosting software; the blogger Rebecca MacKinnon found that it rejected as "prohibited language" the title "I Love Freedom of Speech, Human Rights and Democracy."

Cisco sells equipment to China that is used to maintain censorship controls, but as far as I can tell similar equipment is widely available, including from Chinese companies like Huawei. Cisco also enthusiastically peddles its equipment to the Chinese police. In short, Cisco in China is a bit sleazy but nothing like Yahoo.

Google strikes me as innocent of wrongdoing. True, Google has offered a censored version of its Chinese search engine, which will turn out the kind of results that the Communist Party would like (and thus will not be slowed down by filters and other impediments that now make it unattractive to Chinese users). But Google also kept its unexpurgated (and thus frustratingly slow) Chinese-language search engine available, so in effect its decision gave Chinese Web users more choices rather than fewer.

Representative Chris Smith, who called the hearing and drew the Anne Frank analogy, has introduced a bill to regulate Internet companies abroad, but that's an overreaction. For, as Mr. Anti noted in his own critique, the legislation would just push out foreign companies and leave Chinese with rigidly censored search engines like Baidu.

That said, American companies shouldn't be abjectly surrendering. Microsoft could publish a list of the political terms that it blocks as "prohibited language." Google could post a list of all the Web sites it blocks. They can push back.

In any case, the tech companies are right about a fundamental truth: the Internet is a force for change in China. There are already 110 million Internet users in China, and 13 million bloggers — hugely outnumbering the 30,000-odd censors.

China's security forces try to filter out criticisms, but they often fail. A study by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School found that China managed to block 90 percent of Web sites about the "Tiananmen massacre," 31 percent of sites about independence movements in Tibet, and 82 percent of sites with a derogatory version of the name of former President Jiang Zemin. In other words, some is stopped but a lot gets through.

So think of the Internet as a Trojan horse that will change China. Yahoo has acted disgracefully, but the bigger picture is that the Internet is taking pluralism to China — and profound change may come sooner rather than later, for unrest is stirring across the country.

It's the blogs that are closed that get attention and the cyberdissidents who are arrested who get headlines, just as in America it's the planes that crash that make the evening news. But millions of Chinese blogs and podcasts are taking off, and they are inflicting on the Communist Party the ancient punishment of "ling chi," usually translated as "death by a thousand cuts."

Culture over Economics

The New York Times

February 19, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist

Questions of Culture

Once, not that long ago, economics was the queen of the social sciences. Human beings were assumed to be profit-maximizing creatures, trending toward reasonableness. As societies grew richer and more modern, it was assumed, they would become more secular. As people became better educated, primitive passions like tribalism and nationalism would fade away and global institutions would rise to take their place. As communications technology improved, there would be greater cooperation and understanding. As voters became more educated, they would become more independent-minded and rational.

None of these suppositions turned out to be true. As the world has become richer and better educated, religion hasn't withered; it has become stronger and more fundamentalist. Nationalism and tribalism haven't faded away. Instead, transnational institutions like the U.N. and the European Union are weak and in crisis.

Communications technology hasn't brought people closer together; it has led to greater cultural segmentation, across the world and even within the United States. Education hasn't made people moderate and independent-minded. In the U.S. highly educated voters are more polarized than less educated voters, and in the Arab world some of the most educated people are also the most fanatical.

All of this has thrown a certain sort of materialistic vision into crisis. We now know that global economic and technological forces do not gradually erode local cultures and values. Instead, cultures and values shape economic development. Moreover, as people are empowered by greater wealth and education, cultural differences become more pronounced, not less, as different groups chase different visions of the good life, and react in aggressive ways to perceived slights to their cultural dignity.

Economics, which assumes people are basically reasonable and respond straightforwardly to incentives, is no longer queen of the social sciences.

The events of the past years have thrown us back to the murky realms of theology, sociology, anthropology and history. Even economists know this, and are migrating to more behaviorialist and cultural approaches.

The fundamental change is that human beings now look less like self-interested individuals and more like socially embedded products of family and group. Alan Greenspan said that he once assumed that capitalism was "human nature." But after watching the collapse of the Russian economy, he had come to consider it "was not human nature at all, but culture."

During the first few years of life, parents, communities and societies unconsciously impart ways of being and of perceiving reality that we are only subliminally aware of. How distinct is the individual from the community? Does history move forward or is it cyclical? How do I fulfill my yearning for righteousness? What is possible and what is impossible?

The answers to these questions are wildly diverse, and once worldviews have been absorbed, they produce wildly different levels and types of social and cultural capital. East Asians and Jews, for example, seem to thrive commercially wherever they settle.

It turns out that it's hard to change the destinies of nations and individuals just by pulling economic levers. Over the past few decades, America has transferred large amounts of money to Africa to build factories and spur economic development. None of this has worked. As the economists Raghuram Rajan and Arvind Subramanian demonstrated, there is no correlation between aid and growth.

At home, we spend more money on education than any other nation. We have undertaken a million experiments to restructure schools and bureaucracies. But students who lack cultural and social capital because they did not come from intact, organized families continue to fall further and further behind — unless they come into contact with some great mentor who can not only teach, but also change values and behavior.

It all amounts to this: Events have forced different questions on us. If the big contest of the 20th century was between planned and free market economies, the big questions of the next century will be understanding how cultures change and can be changed, how social and cultural capital can be nurtured and developed, how destructive cultural conflict can be turned to healthy cultural competition.

People who think about global development are out in front in thinking about these matters. (I'd recommend rival anthologies: "Culture Matters," edited by Lawrence Harrison and Samuel Huntington, and "Culture and Public Action," edited by Vijayendra Rao and Michael Walton.) But the rest of us will catch up soon.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

NYTimes on China and Cyber Walls

YHR on three things: Yakima School Bond, Walmart and an OpEd on Ag

Lesson Plan Day 27--Lab

  1. Faculty Lecture Wednesday.
  2. Tilt
  3. Let’s try this:
    1. Education in the Yakima Valley
    2. Agriculture in the Yakima Valley
    3. Wal Mart
    4. Business? Others?

i. Find what Friedman might say about them.

1. Start with the Index

ii. Get a list of quotes and page numbers.

iii. What are the other sides?

iv. Where can we get information?

v. Who can we call in? When can we do it?

  1. Due Dates:
    1. List of quotes from Friedman Wednesday
    2. Outline—2.21
    3. Rough Draft—2.22?
    4. Speakers 2.27&28?
    5. Draft 2—3.3

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Lesson Plan Day 26 Tues

Lesson Plan Day 26

  1. Faculty Lecture Wednesday.
  2. This is Not a Test notes
  3. Let’s try this:
    1. Education in the Yakima Valley
    2. Agriculture in the Yakima Valley
    3. Wal Mart
    4. Business? Others?

i. Find what Friedman might say about them.

1. Start with the Index

ii. Get a list of quotes and page numbers.

iii. What are the other sides?

iv. Where can we get information?

v. Who can we call in? When can we do it?

  1. The essay should present the viewpoints of the various sides of the issue. If you’re having trouble seeing the sides, try the Great Sorting Out again, esp. Multiple Identity Disorder. How are we affected as citizens of Yakima, USA, consumers, stockholders, workers, patriots…(Walmart’s an easy example. Agriculture is a bit more tricky)
  2. Let’s try Walmart…
  3. The essay should attempt to represent these sides fairly and in a balanced way.
  4. Balanced is a slippery word.
  5. The essay should also, after the intro or less likely, as part of the conclusion, explain how Friedman/Flatism affects the issue.
  6. YOUR thesis should be stated in the introduction, but should be written last.

  1. Due Dates:
    1. List of quotes from Friedman Wednesday
    2. Outline—2.21
    3. Rough Draft—2.22
    4. Speakers 2.27&28?
    5. Draft 2—3.3

  1. Class Matters? I don’t know yet.
  2. Last day of class is 3.10 and we will probably have something due during finals week, but not meet as a class (drop off portfolio?)

Tree Top and China

The Big Apple

Ugly stuff. But there's more.
And even more--They've been reading Friedman.
And the whole list.

Monday, February 13, 2006

Lesson Plan Day 25 monday

Lesson Plan Day 25

  1. A note about pace and high expectations--This is Not a Test
  2. Transfer Day Feb. 14th 830-1 in the HUB
  3. Faculty Lecture—with nudity.
  4. This is Not a Test
  5. Companies and the flat world

i. Seven Rules—disaggregate the work

  1. Let’s try this:
    1. Education
    2. Agriculture
    3. Wal Mart
    4. Others

i. Find what Friedman might say about them.

1. Start with the Index

ii. Get a list of quotes and page numbers.

iii. Where can we get information?

iv. Who can we call in? When can we do it?

  1. Due Dates:
    1. List of quotes from Friedman
    2. Outline—2.21
    3. Rough Draft—2.22
    4. Draft 2—2.28

8. Class Matters? I don’t know yet.
9. Last day of class is 3.10 and we will probably have something due during finals week, but not meet as a class (drop off portfolio?)

Inmates/Outsource

This is a great, strange story. Might fit essay topic on jails in Yakima.

Thursday, February 09, 2006

China and Asia

Some Assembly Needed
Today NYTimes

Higher Ed and WASL?

Panel Explores Standardized Tests for College
Today, NYTimes
  • Lesson Plan Day 23 102 Lab
  • Amazon Search and Google Print
  • Wikis part two
  • Quiz
  • Pick an essay topic you might be interested in.
    Write for five minutes—what are the “sides”? What would Friedman say?
  • Pick another.
  • Write for five minute
  • Small Groups based on second choice.
  • Small Groups based on first choice.
  • Ten minutes of online research.
  • If you hit dead ends right away, try synonyms. If synonyms don’t work, try another topic or think of where else you can get information.
  • Some articles in YHR/NYT might cost money…
  • Tilt?
  • Homework
  • This is Not a Test 276-308
  • Companies and the flat world
    i. Seven Rules—disaggregate the work as with Flatteners
  • Narrow your choice of topics down to two by Monday. This might mean more digging to see if it’s possible to write about it.
  • We will be reading the Conclusion next, so if you have time, get started.

NYTimes Op Ed

The New York Times



February 2, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist

The Nation of the Future

Everywhere I go people tell me China and India are going to blow by us in the coming decades. They've got the hunger. They've got the people. They've got the future. We're a tired old power, destined to fade back to the second tier of nations, like Britain did in the 20th century.

This sentiment is everywhere — except in the evidence. The facts and figures tell a different story.

Has the United States lost its vitality? No. Americans remain the hardest working people on the face of the earth and the most productive. As William W. Lewis, the founding director of the McKinsey Global Institute, wrote, "The United States is the productivity leader in virtually every industry." And productivity rates are surging faster now than they did even in the 1990's.

Has the United States stopped investing in the future? No. The U.S. accounts for roughly 40 percent of the world's R. & D. spending. More money was invested in research and development in this country than in the other G-7 nations combined.

Is the United States becoming a less important player in the world economy? Not yet. In 1971, the U.S. economy accounted for 30.52 percent of the world's G.D.P. Since then, we've seen the rise of Japan, China, India and the Asian tigers. The U.S. now accounts for 30.74 percent of world G.D.P., a slightly higher figure.

What about the shortage of scientists and engineers? Vastly overblown. According to Duke School of Engineering researchers, the U.S. produces more engineers per capita than China or India. According to The Wall Street Journal, firms with engineering openings find themselves flooded with résumés. Unemployment rates for scientists and engineers are no lower than for other professions, and in some specialties, such as electrical engineering, they are notably higher.

Michael Teitelbaum of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation told The Wall Street Journal last November, "No one I know who has looked at the data with an open mind has been able to find any sign of a current shortage." The G.A.O., the RAND Corporation and many other researchers have picked apart the quickie studies that warn of a science and engineering gap. "We did not find evidence that such shortages have existed at least since 1990, nor that they are on the horizon," the RAND report concluded.

What about America's lamentable education system? Well, it's true we do a mediocre job of educating people from age 0 to 18, even though we spend by far more per pupil than any other nation on earth. But we do an outstanding job of training people from ages 18 to 65.

At least 22 out of the top 30 universities in the world are American. More foreign students come to American universities now than before 9/11.

More important, the American workplace is so competitive, companies are compelled to promote lifelong learning. A U.N. report this year ranked the U.S. third in the world in ease of doing business, after New Zealand and Singapore. The U.S. has the second most competitive economy on earth, after Finland, according the latest Global Competitiveness Report. As Michael Porter of Harvard told The National Journal, "The U.S. is second to none in terms of innovation and an innovative environment."

What about partisan gridlock and our dysfunctional political system? Well, entitlement debt remains the biggest threat to the country's well-being, but in one area vital to the country's future posterity, we have reached a beneficent consensus. American liberals have given up on industrial policy, and American conservatives now embrace an aggressive federal role for basic research.

Ford and G.M. totter and almost nobody suggests using public money to prop them up. On the other hand, President Bush, reputed to be hostile to science, has increased the federal scientific research budget by 50 percent since taking office, to $137 billion annually. Senators Lamar Alexander and Jeff Bingaman have proposed excellent legislation that would double the R. & D. tax credit and create a Darpa-style lab in the Department of Energy, devoting $9 billion for scientific research and education. That bill has 60 co-sponsors, 30 Democrats and 30 Republicans.

Recent polling suggests that people in Afghanistan and Iraq are more optimistic about their nations' futures than people in the United States. That's just crazy, even given our problems with health care, growing inequality and such. America's problem over the next 50 years will not be wrestling with decline. It will be helping the frustrated individuals and nations left so far behind.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Real Estate Agents Next to go?

From today's nytimes: 2 Web Sites Push Further into Services Real Estate Agents Offer

Essay 2 Rough Draft of Options

Essay 2: English 102, Winter Quarter

Walls v. Webs—The Valley and the World

This essay is a research essay. As such, it should begin with a question.

I would like you to look at one of the following issues from different angles.

Some issues will have two sides. Some will have more.

All of the issues should be seen through the filter of the “Flat World” Friedman discusses.

I’ll be more specific by Monday at the latest, but here’s a preliminary list for you to start thinking about. I’m also open to other ideas.

  1. Bond/Levy measures failures in the Yakima Valley

  1. Walmart

    1. in West Valley
    2. Health Care Law in Washington State

  1. The future of Agriculture in Yakima.
    1. Aspargus and South American trade agreements
    2. The Apple Juice Capital of the World? Selah?
    3. Zirkle Fruit class action law suit
    4. Corporate Farms/Orchards
    5. Wine sales through the mail
    6. Thai workers
    7. Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA)

  1. Immigration

    1. Minute Men Project
    2. ESL in Wapato

  1. Tourism as economic base in Yakima

  1. Jail beds as an economic base in Yakima

  1. Saw mill closing

  1. YVCC’s role in Globalization 3.0 in YV (Vocational/Transfer/AA?)

  1. How can Yakima use the Flat World to our advantage?

  1. Propose a new business model based on what you have read. What will be the new niche in Yakima?
    1. This can be positive, or can be negative. (maybe we will need LOTS more jail beds, for example, or low income housing…)
  2. Client Logic
  3. Baby Jogger
  4. Snokist Strike over Health Care

Lesson Plan Day 22

Lesson Plan Day 22

  1. Transfer Day Feb. 14th 830-1 in the HUB
  2. Vagina Monologues: Th-Sat 730 Kendall Hall
  3. Allied Arts (5000 Lincoln) Open Mic and featured reader tonight 7pm
  4. Poetry Slam, Friday, 600 Kendall Hall
  5. Help me with this: www.bluebegoniapress.blogspot.com (Friday, Saturday, Sunday; next Wednesday; Friday) Send it out and do me a favor. No, there are no points for this. Just thanks.
  6. The Great Sorting Out notes
  7. Essay Options, more details coming later
  8. U-Make Quiz
    1. Five t/f questions
    2. Five multiple choice
    3. Five fill in the blank
    4. No repeats
    5. I’ll pick the best from both classes and the quiz will be tomorrow, including “The Quiet Crisis” (your reading homework)

i. America and Free Trade

ii. The Untouchables

  1. Grades so far

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Lesson Plan Day 19

1. Flatteners Report by group
2. Charlie Rose, Wednesday Show
3. Discovery Channel/Thomas Friedman special on India
In full

Homework:
Feb 3rd: The Triple Convergence 173-181
Feb. 4th: 181-200
Feb. 5th: The Great Sorting Out 200-208
Feb 6th: 208-222