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My name is Brianna Beyrooty, I'm the new Farm Apprentice at Woolman. For the next 9 months I will be working in the garden, experiencing a full season of farming. From Permaculture to weeding, I'm excited to get my hands dirty and see what this beautiful earth has to offer!
Woolman Blog
For the past two weeks students have been researching different aspects of our campus and looking for ways to reduce our energy consumption. Yesterday students presented their energy audits to the class, and in the coming weeks we will be implementing the changes that they've recommended. The first group looked at our dish sanitizer and alternatives to it.
Based off their research they will be proposing to the community that we save energy by washing dishes by hand for a week. We will see how that method serves or does not serve the community.
The next group — Alex, Pedro, and Wade presented on our wood stoves and their efficiency.
What was most interesting for them and the class was how inefficient space heaters are and the benefits of EPA certified wood stoves. We have written grants in the past, through the Strawberry Creek Meeting Dime-A-Gallon Grant, to replace old wood stoves with EPA certified ones, and this research supports doing so again.
We then heard about Woolman's vehicle use, and a proposal to buy a two-seater leaf car for short town trips, which we will be looking into. Finally, Lily and Luz presented on cabin lights. They looked into switching them to motion sensing lights and/or timer lights. Their data showed that switching the porch lights of all 8 cabins to motion sensing would cost about $100, but pay for itself in a year. They will be proposing this change to the community next Wednesday.
I am excited for the impact these students will have on the campus and for the understanding that they gained while doing these projects. Their knowledge will transfer to where ever they go when the leave Woolman, and will hopefully have a positive impact on those communities as well.
Each semester, the community interns plan a pretty rad trip to somewhere in California for the students to catch a break, get away from schoolwork, and let the campus rest for a few days. This semester, we took our students down the coast to Big Sur, California for a few days of beaching, hiking, swimming, resting, s'mores-making, and exploring.
Day One: We left Woolman at 8:00am (on time!) to start our day of driving. We stopped in Las Trampas Wilderness – it looked like the Shire! – for a picnic lunch and a chance to stretch our legs with a short hike up the grassy hills. We finished the drive around 3:00pm at Plaskett Creek Campground to set up camp and catch a beach sunset.
photo by Pedro
Day Two: Six-mile round-trip hike up to some stunning views of the Pacific Ocean with a stop for lunch on the trail. We headed back to the campground to drop off gear, have a surprise snack (chips!), and head over to the beach to explore, swim, and play.
photo by Pedro
Day Three: We packed up camp early in the morning and were on the road by 8:00am to drive North to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I was driving the suburban on the winding and beautiful CA-1 byway, watching rainbows appear seemingly behind every turn, while Lily played an acoustic guitar and everyone sang along for the two-hour ride.
After the aquarium – where we saw jellyfish, stingrays, sea turtles, puffins and penguins, giant tunas, tiny sardines, octopi, and hammerhead sharks – we headed to Taqueria Santa Cruz for a taco dinner. We drove back to Woolman that night for pack-in and cozy cabin fires.
Happy March! It is hard to believe that the semester started almost six weeks ago. We have some updates for you from different aspects of Woolman life, written by various teachers.
Students and interns had a gorgeous 3 days on Staycation last weekend! They headed down the coast to the Big Sur region, camping at Plaskett Creek campground which bore a lovely resemblance to Frodo and Bilbo's shire. A 6 mile hike up the switchbacks of the Cruickshank Trail was well worth the trek when met with epic oceanic views at the summit and a West Coast sunset at the shore in the evening. Saturday morning started early to get down to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. While the tentacle exhibit was incredible, the simple pleasures of double rainbows, tacos, and accoustic melodies of fellow students were a wonderful completion to a weekend away.
In one of our first units in Global Thinking, we examined how each of us views the world. What parts of our identity, backgrounds, experiences, and other aspects of our selves influence our perspectives? Where do our biases and opinions come from? Multiple perspectives is a key theme that we will explore throughout the semester, and students began by digging deep within themselves and shared what makes up their unique worldview.
The semester is in full swing! After a week of orientation, and a hectic first week of classes, people are starting to find their rhythm. Each of the teachers have written about their classes for this update.
The students hit the ground running in terms of being introduced to and grasping the basic concepts of NVC. On their second day here in orientation week we identified what values/life qualities would be present in their ideal community and what we were willing to do to live into or out of those values. In our first NVC class we looked at what gets in the way of us living like this all the time. This led us to exploring right/wrong, good/bad thinking and how that naturally flows into a system of punishments and rewards and named that way of living as a "power over" culture. The whole process and consciousness of NVC was presented as a choice to explore a "power with" culture instead. Next class we will continue to explore what it means to embody a value that we deeply care about so we may better meet hard and challenging moments from a place of fullness, without judgements or blame.
In Environmental Science, we began the semester hiking around Woolman's campus, learning about the land and what we will be covering. We then shared our experiences with science and our dreams for this class. We are now studying global warming and the biases commonly associated with both sides of the issue. From here we will delve into energy, and groups of students will be doing an energy audit of different aspects of Woolman's campus.
In Peace Studies we began by sharing our hopes and fears and envisioning the world in which we want to live. We also made collective agreements with the goal of creating a safer space for learners who support, challenge, and affirm each other. In this introductory unit we are building a theoretical foundation drawing on concepts of peace, violence, power and interconnection. We are exploring the power of voicing our truths and transforming our silences in to action for peace and justice. This week students wrote and shared powerful "Where I'm From" poems.
In Global Thinking, we began by exploring what it means to be a global citizen, working off the idea that we are all interconnected to each other and thus in order to be agents of change we must start by changing our own lifestyles. We have examined our individual worldviews and what parts of our identities and experiences help shape our perspectives. This week we began our unit on media literacy with a TED Talk by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi.
In Farm to Table, we started with a class on fruit tree pruning, which we will be practicing all spring as we maintain our orchard. During shared work, several students learned to create trays of seedlings, which will be transplanted to the fields in April. This week we are talking about why growing, preparing, and consuming our own foods is a form of activism.
Sorry, we don't have many pictures from class… yet! But here are some from the Contra dance we took students to this past weekend, shared work, and community meeting. Oh, and a Valentine's Day gift Eli and Andrew gave to Wade!
When I think of intersectionality,
I see a venn diagram of overlapping social categories
I see colorful pasta intertwined to make mutually constructed identities
I see runners on a track
I see obstacles set in front of them
On the basis of their race
and gender
I see privilege and the power to oppress
I see multi layered oppression of people of color
I see gender, race, class, sexuality
a checklist of categories that place us within the patriarchal hierarchy we call our world
But when I translate this to to world around me, and to feminism
I see a huge part of the media portraying white middle class heterosexual cisgendered ablebodied men and women as humanity
I see politicians claiming neutral politics
That serve this fictional majority
I see a public space filled with institutions
That were built to serve the hegemonic masculinity
and oppress the other
I see the center of knowledge production operated by white men claiming objectivity
Where are the people of color?
Where are the colonized?
Where are the disabled people?
Where are those who lie outside the recognized boundaries?
This is what needs to be seen
This is what needs to be made visible
These are the voices that need to be heard
This is the call that can reshape economic structures of oppression and exclusion
Which can unmask the identity of the "neutral" citizen
Which will show that his privilege is built upon the exploitation and discrimination of the marginalized
But how can the concept of intersectionality be more than just a buzzword?
More than a checklist of static identity categories
And instead something that is used to really take into account
The complex forms of discrimination
Shaped by history
And social structures
As a white middle class cisgendered woman
And a bearer of privilege,
I am trying to understand the ways i reproduce systems of oppression
So that i may be apart of deconstructing them
I am not humanity
I am not women
I am not objective
I am a standpoint in solidarity with,
and recognition of society's many unique and complex identities
In other words, I hope for solidarity.
I hope for understanding, gender starscapes and fluidity
I hope to bring compassion for the unknown
And recognition of the need to listen, I hope for humility.
Food Intensive
Learning about grafting at Wolfskill Experimental Orchard & Picking strawberries at Swanton Berry Farms
Ecology Research Presentations
Sustainability Projects
Woolman well data for this semester & Ceramic coffee filters to replace plastic ones
It's been a very busy season in the garden this year! The fields have been put to bed and are bursting with a think blanket of cover crop spouts. Our community has been working hard all year to tend and celebrate the little sweet spot on our campus that provides such bounty. Since January we built a new and very nice green house, remodeled our beehive, installed a huge drainage system as well as three water catchment elements to preserve our soils, reduce run- off and increase the water holding capacity on site. All the while, we're pumping out hundreds of pounds of the freshest of foods, rich in nutrients for our community in as well as inspiring young people through garden education. We had a wonderful season with our small and loyal CSA members. Woolman has also been selling produce to Summerthyme's Bakery, where we are featured in their weekly specials. Wow, no wonder we're tired! A huge THANK YOU to the students, interns, staff, visiting students and volunteers who all played a part in making this season a success!
In the Intern Garden Class and Farm to Table, we've started exploring the ethics and principles of Permaculture. Permaculture is best described as "a system of assembling conceptual, material and strategic components in a pattern which functions to benefit life in all it's forms. It seeks to provide a sustainable and secure place for living things on this earth." It's been a wonderful and interesting opportunity to brainstorm ways we might design our lives to be more ecologically and socially resilient in this time of globalization. In the Woolman garden, we hope to inspire mutually beneficial approaches to life though observation, careful thought, smart work and cooperation, leaving plenty of room for imagination and enjoyment. As Einstein said, "We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking we used when we created them."
The Woolman Community Intern Program forms an essential thread that helps to weave together the fabric of life here at Woolman. On any given day, you will find these magic-makers creating beautiful meals, planting seeds, harvesting roots, connecting with students, hugging, laughing, crying, supporting – doing the invaluable work of the heart – an organ that doesn't just pump blood through the body, but synergizes all of its cells, organs and systems. Indeed the interns here combine really hard work and deep heart-work, in a way that allows unique and emergent life to flow through the veins of this community.
The classes we teach here deal a lot with how to live in a time of great change, and how to hold oneself and each other lovingly as beings who are constantly changing and growing. I am excited to teach Cooking & Nutrition Class to the interns this semester, as I see it as an opportunity to look at this truth through a different window. What are the interconnected systems inside our physical bodies that inspire our one emotional, mental, spiritual dynamic life? What do we know about these physiological systems, and how do we know it? How do our bodies relate to the Earth, and what role does food play in this relationship? Every Thursday morning, interns come to prepare a meal for the community together and spend time considering the story of food as it moves through ecosystems and human hands, and the stories we tell ourselves that shape what the food does when it gets to our body.
Intern Seminar is a time to gather skills to celebrate and support life. Thus far, we have had classes on: The Art of Live-Culture Fermentation, The Great Toilet Challenge (Plumbing 101), Woodworking I and II, Craniosacral Therapy Introduction – an example of the art of hands-on healing, and The Acorn Model: A Nature-based Model for Mentoring and Community Building. This semester the interns are also taking a weekly Garden Seminar and a Non-violent Communication class, to widen and deepen their skill set as change-makers in the world.
"All Oppression is Connected" –Staceyann Chin
One of the most inspirational and exciting experiences for me all semester was co-organizing and co-facilitating the Global Issues and Peace Studies (GIPS) trip. Our goal in designing the trip was to give our students the opportunity to see models of activism and social change in action in order to empower them to see themselves as agents of change. We have been studying themes of peace, violence, and systemic oppression and wanted to present students with examples in the Bay Area of ordinary people making extraordinary efforts to challenge the status-quo and create just communities. Being from the Bay Area, I was excited to collaborate with many friends and organizations whose work I admire and respect.
The theme of our trip this fall was inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King's 1967 Beyond Vietnam speech in which he states:
"I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin—we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered"
We wanted to highlight the intersectionality of systemic oppression and violence as it manifests through the giant triplets of racism, capitalism, and militarism. In class this semester we have been working with students to not only develop a critical consciousness of these intersecting oppressions in their daily lives but to envision, discuss, and act upon the change they want to see in the world. From community murals and gardens to meditation circles to FOIA requests to nonviolent protest to creating alternative institutions, we wanted to provoke thoughts on different organizing styles and challenge students to examine which models of change resonate most with their own passions and communities. Below you will find the schedule of activities from the week and a reflection piece by one of our students, Flannery Raabe.
- Tri Valley CAREs presentation & perimeter tour of nuclear weapons lab
- Oscar Grant mural at Fruitvale Station
-Visit Canticle Farm
- Generation Waking Up workshop
-Political activism talk at Oakland City Hall
-AFSC presentation on the prison industry
-LLNL presentation at Discovery Center with weapons researcher
-Lunch and mural tour with 67 Sueños
-AORTA Solidarity Economics workshop
-Iraq Vets Against the War presentation
-Beehive Collective workshop/exhibition
-Watch Fruitvale Station
- Berkeley Poetry Slam
-Open house dinner
-East Point Peace Academy Nonviolence training & exchange w/ Youth Spirit Artworks
The GIPS trip was inspiring and educational. I was constantly considering the theme of our trip, the giant triplets of militarism, capitalism, and racism, and the idea that fear could be the root of all of them. One of the coolest parts of the trip, for me, was the nuclear and anti-nuclear places because they combined both environmental issues and human issues. On Monday, we talked to a group called Tri-Valley CAREs, an anti-nuclear community watchdog. Marylia Kelley, one of the two staff that the organization has, talked to us about the work her organization has done and about the work done in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She told us that as part of Tri-Valley CAREs, she has helped workers from Lawrence Livermore get compensation for injuries from a variety of things, especially exposure to radiation. Marylia's organization helps provide the community an alternative to the militaristic nuclear lab through their work to expose the negative effects of the lab and provide paths of resistance. What really struck me about this organization was their willingness to work with the community, rather than hiding things from the community like the lab seemed to do. The collaboration seemed to be an important tool in community organizing.
After talking to Marylia, we talked to a few people who have spent almost 30 years working as part of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Our group asked questions that were perhaps a little too attacking, but we were straight to the point and asked what we wanted to know. However, she seemed to evade most of our questions. Her answers were vague, and it seemed like she was often just repeating the question. We asked follow up questions in some cases to try to get a clearer answer, but she dodged even those. Overall, I left the lab feeling disappointed and suspicious of what she wasn't saying when she avoided our questions. Maybe she just didn't know the answers, but even that would cause me to worry a little bit. It's also possible that she wasn't allowed to disclose the answers and was trying to appease us best she could, but that would mean there is something to hide. Either way, the way the talk went made me suspicious, or at least uncomfortable. I'm wondering now how I would have felt if we had gone to the lab first and to Tri-Valley CAREs second, but, honestly, I'm not sure it would have made much of a difference.
When we were visiting the lab, I felt like militarism and capitalism definitely influenced the work they do. Without the militaristic society we live in, we wouldn't need the lab to keep the nuclear weapons we have fully functional. The tour guide admitted to being motivated by fear and it seemed to me that the whole lab's militaristic ideology is motivated by fear and capitalistic values. A lot of the values of capitalism we talked about in the AORTA workshop on Wednesday were present in the work of the lab. They seemed more interested in self preservation than things that are beneficial to the whole.
On Monday night, we watched the movie Fruitvale Station. This movie documented the last day of Oscar Grant's life. Oscar was a young, black male living in Oakland, California. He had a girlfriend and they wereraising a daughter together. On the night he was murdered, he was taking the BART subway home from a New Year's celebration. He was stopped by the police and ended up being shot. The inherent racism in our police system was clearly at play here and after hearing so much about police brutality in class and in the news, it was powerful to see a real story of the affects of racism in our police system. In addition, it seems to me that the "security" of the community is similar to the "security" of the nation through nuclear weapons — motivated by fear. Both nuclear weapons use and Oscar Grant's murder were horrendous side effects of fear.
Reflection by Flannery Raabe
Photos by Gray Horwitz
Friday, Nobember 14th, marked the 124th firing of the oldest noborigama kiln in the U.S., built on Woolman soil in 1971 by a large crew, including Dick Hotchkiss, who runs it currently. Woolman students, local potters, and some from as far off as North Carolina came to our campus for this three-day event.
A noborigama is a Japanese style of kiln dating back to the 17th century. It features a large clay structure with multiple connected chambers situated on a slope.
Day 1:
We split rounds of cedar into massive rows of kindling.
We glazed our pieces together, and stacked them on shelves next to the kiln.
It was strange to see over 2,000 ceramic pieces, each individually and carefully crafted by so many different potters and sculptors, all fit into a single kiln.
The kiln doors were sealed shut late at night. A fire was built at the top to create suction, and another fire was built at the bottom. We stoked it until the fire glowed yellow-white and a searing kiln wind pulled from the bottom chamber out through the chimney.
Day 2:
We stoked the kiln all morning, all day, and into the night, in shifts.
One person pulls the stopper out, one throws the wood in, then shuts the stopper, all in one quick motion. It's so hot that the wood explodes rather than burns.
The heat is intense, but it's much more exciting than unpleasant. Except by the end of your shift, that is.
Day 3:
This is the time we'd been referring to as "Christmas morning."
We opened up the doors, and assembly-line passed thousands of hot ceramics into the open.
"No oggling. Keep the line moving."
We oggled. I oggled quickly, caressed each piece with my hands as I passed it to the lady on my right, who was beaming back at me. Honestly, my heart was pounding with joy and excitement. I cannot overstate the emotional effect of watching all of these transformed pieces, hot out of the kiln and baked dark and smooth and vibrant, being passed out into the open. I saw each piece individually, and was briefly elated by its elegant form, its weight, the way its heat lingered on my hands, the rich dark interior or the the way the glazes interplay on the rim, before passing it to my right and taking the next on my left.
And finally, every piece was layed out together in the open, and all the artists walked among them, collecting their own, admiring others', and talking.
There's an element of unpredictability in the process that is fascinating. The upper chambers were hotter than the lower; the bottom one was more prone to scorching; reduction and oxidation work in mysterious ways, making the same glaze turn different colors on different pots, different colors on the same pot, or different colors on different sides of a pot; some unfortunate pieces (unless you're into that) had pieces of the kiln roof fall into them. The number of variables that play into how a piece turns out is dizzying. It's an exercise in acceptance.
I think I may be a little bit in love with ceramics. There were pieces so finely crafted that I could feel the sculptors hands poring over every curve and surface, and, though I'm blushing as I write this, there were pieces that were so beautiful, or so shapely that they made my heart flutter in a way that I can really only compare to meeting the gaze of someone I have a crush on.
One of the greatest things about ceramics, as Giovanna noted to me, is the community it creates. All these potters and sculptors rely on each other, and come together here for this kiln firing. Thank you all the people who built the dragon kiln, all the people who kept it running, the people who split the wood, the people who stacked, the people who stoked, the people who piled, the people who passed, the people who brought food, the people who explained to me the nuances of how the whole confounded thing works, the people who contributed works of ceramic to the kiln, the people who contributed their knowledge, the people who contributed their work and their love, and all the people who shared the joy of the whole process.
Thank you all,
(First photo by Maggie Jones. Subsequent photos by Gray and Nomi)
We shared a beautiful meal together (prepared by the magic-making interns - thank you) before our Woolman community members went off in different directions for the holiday. It was an occasion to let our attention take root in the land here for a moment, to feel the feet that have walked upon it, all the movement and movements, fierceness and stillness, light and shadow … to acknowledge the various lives and forms of life that have found a home here, felt lost here, felt found, and are still searching. So much gratitude for YOU.
photo credit to Gray Horwitz. Thank you!
This poem was performed Wednesday night in Berkeley at a Slam Poetry event. (Click on the image to see the Video).
Every semester the Woolman campus hosts the Quaker Quarterly Meeting and many Quakers all come to stay on Woolman campus and use the cabins and classrooms for meetings and lodging. Students and interns can join, or go on a mid-semeter adventure called Staycation where we choose as a semester where to go for four days. Our semester chose to go to the Stinson Beach/Point Reyes area!
On the first day of staycation we all piled in cars and made it to our campsite and got settled in with plenty of time for a sunset beach trip and a wonderful dinner!
On the second day we started out with sleeping in (finally!) and a lazy breakfast. At around 10 o'clock am, a group left camp and went on a beautiful hike from our campsite down the mountain to Stinson beach. It was a day filled with lots of swimming in the ocean, reading and napping in the sun, exploring the small town, and long walks on the beach!
On day three we all drove down to the beach at Point Reyes and one group of students decided to stay and relax at the beach and search for tide pools, while another decided to go for a hike. The group that stayed at the beach was successful in their search for sea anemones and a relaxing day of reading and napping in the sun. The other group had an amazing time hiking the Tomales Point Trail. On the hike we saw gorgeous views as well as lots of lots of wildlife including tule elk, coyotes, falcons, and a bobcat!
After the hike we all met back up at the beach and had more time swimming and sunbathing before heading into the town of Point Reyes for dinner and ended the night with ice cream and free freshly pressed apple cider gifted to us by a 1970's graduate of the John Woolman School!
On the final day of Staycation we all packed up camp and headed to the ocean for one last lunch on the beach, and then packed into the vans sandy, salty, tired, slightly sunburned and happy from a great vacation. On our arrival back on campus we were greeted with lots of hugs and joy from Dorothy, Gray, and other staff members!
The night of October 7th, several interns, students, and I slept out among the oaks to watch the lunar eclipse. In doing so, I was reminded of the nights we slept out during the Wilderness Trip at the beginning of the semester, and the bonds that have been made within our community. There was a sense of calm and comfort as we waited for the eclipse, but I waited restlessly, finding celestial objects with students in our telescope and talking to anyone who would listen (read: stay awake) about The Moon. In a month, we will be spending a few classes studying astronomy, learning about the universe, our place in it, and how the greater world outside our pale blue dot affects life.
"The Earth and The Moon would more accurately be called the Earth-Moon System. The Moon is astoundingly close to Earth, from a cosmological perspective, and their relative sizes are also very close.
We owe a great deal to our moon. Life on this planet would be very different, if it managed to survive at all, without The Moon. Ocean tides 'stir' the waters of the planet, creating a semi-aqueous zone around every ocean which would be the perfect place for sea life to try to come up on land. The Moon also brightens the night sky, guiding our sleep cycles and our behavioral evolution. Most importantly for us though, it serves as an asteroid catcher, instead of a single gravity well around our planet there are two of comparable size.
Earth is a perfect planet for many reasons but an important one, our moon, is often forgotten. When I see The Moon at night, I can't help but think about how critical it has been in our development. If Earth is our mother, then The Moon is undoubtedly our father.
The Moon protected Earth while it was new with early life. The Moon has countless visible scars but still keeps constant vigil over Earth and it's inhabitants. It helped raise us, holding our hands as we learned to walk and lighting up the nights so that we could see. And just like Earth, The Moon has been a wonderful teacher. It taught us how to keep time which let us track the seasons. It helped us figure out how our solar system worked. It helped us learn about gravity. It showed us that relativity was correct, for the most part, and let us feel good about ourselves when we finally managed to say hi in person.
Finally, The Moon will give us a push as we leave home to join the rest of the solar system."
~Adapted from a quote by Content404
One December, 67 Suenos took a trip to Stockton, home of seasonal work. And those that work in the fields often make cardboard homes. The group had previously visited the forgotten city as they call it. My folks live in cardboard homes under a bridge, cold nights warmed by fire, surrounded by people with the same struggle. We were inspired by how much people made with what they have, and we came back with the idea to help out, build homes and give food and clothes. But when we finally got to the forgotten city, we were hit by their reality. Stockton police remembered the forgotten people, and a week before we arrived enforcements raided their home. There was one family that stayed behind with nowhere to go, but they were not willing to talk to us, afraid of what might happen. In Peace and Conflict Studies: An Introduction, by Ho-Won Jeong, he says,"If human beings are denied decent education, housing, opportunity to work and freedom to express themselves they become marginalized. Conditions for social fragmentation are created by a lack of equity and freedom" ( pg. 21 p5). What happened to the families in Stockton is a perfect example of both how they were treated as insignificant, and not respected enough to be given the right to build their own homes out of scratch in a country that is so rich and has enough resources for everyone yet poverty still exists. Structural violence is when certain people, genders, classes and nationalities hold more power as opposed to others, more resources and opportunities than other groups. This unequal advantage is built into the very social, political and economic systems that govern societies, states and the world. Since the system was built with the goal to keep classes and races believing that they are less than, then the system has not failed because it was never intended for us, people of color, to succeed. Hence poverty, hence the multitude of people that got stolen from their right to build their way up. You hate us in the streets but you love us when we are working for your companies.
I come from a community full of hard working people, from working early mornings to midnight shifts all to take care of bills and feed their children, East Oakland is where I reside. My community is one of the many targeted communities, from trying to pass curfew laws, to gentrifying the city that black and brown immigrants already occupy. Gentrification is a part of capitalism. Capitalism relies on some areas of the world being underdeveloped so that they can be cheaply invested in, "developed," and used to make profits. This happens across countries, within countries, across cities, and within cities. Gentrification is one way that capitalism develops "urban" areas. Capitalist landlords let certain neighborhoods get run down and refuse to do repairs. Once the neighborhood is devalued, landlords and capitalists can then invest, fix things up, and sell for a higher price. The difference between the value of a property when it's run-down and devalued and the value of a property that's re-invested in is called the "value gap." The difference between what a run down property can charge for rent and what a fixed up property can charge for rent is the "rent gap." The rent gap is what motivates landlords and capitalists to invest in run-down neighborhoods . . . the potential profit that they can get once they fix things up. In Oakland Jerry Brown, California Governor, came up with the idea that to fix violence he needed to bring in 10,000 more new residents into our city. A city that already has high incarceration rates due to "legal discrimination" – housing: rent, location, condition. Employment and education: built to keep us eating right out of their hand. Public benefits: what is that? We have none. – My community has a lot of racial profiling and targeting so many youth in school. I come from a district that uses a lot of our schools budget that should be going into our education, yet they use a lot of our funding for school police. Our youth are being targeted in and out of school. From the book The New Jim Crow, author Michelle Alexander states, ".. National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals .. No new institutions for adults should be built and existing institutions for juvenile should be closed". In 1973, there were 350,000 people held in prisons nation wide but today there are 2 million humans incarcerated in the US alone. Over the past twenty years, the State of California has built twenty one new prisons, added thousands of cells to existing facilities, and increased its inmate population eight fold. Nonviolent offenders have been responsible for most of that increase. The number of drug offenders imprisoned in the state today is more than twice the number of inmates who were imprisoned for all crimes in 1978. California now has the biggest prison system in the Western industrialized world, a system 40 percent bigger than the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The state holds more inmates in its jails and prisons than do France, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Singapore, and the Netherlands combined. There is overwhelming evidence institutions create crime rather then prevent it.
I am a part of a youth group called 67 Suenos, 67 came out of the 67% of the youth that weren't going to benefit from the Dream Act, the Dream Act "This bill would provide conditional permanent residency to certain immigrants of good moral character who graduate from U.S. high schools, arrived in the United States as minors, and lived in the country continuously for at least five years prior to the bill's enactment. If they were to complete two years in the military or two years at a four-year institution of higher learning" says Wikipedia. This bill off course did not benefit more than half of our youth, they were viewed as either valedictorians or criminals, but most definitely left out the real part the human part of our undocumented youth. The ones that had to stop pursuing an education because ICE enforcements struck them with deporting a mother or a father and now our youth had to take care of siblings or even have to look for help to provide economic help, we are not criminals but we all cant get straight A's when we have to worry where our next meals will come from, recently we found out that also from the immigration reform 67% of our undocumented families are being left out of an important conversation, our future. What 67 Suenos does is hold a safe space for youth to learn and get informed with what is happening in the real world struggles and what media is always leaving out. We hold a healing circle for our youth to talk about the things that we have to carry around, it provides us with a space to heal each other and ourselves by communicating and using medicine we call sage, sap of the tree. We go on protest to fight the many things that affects us and our communities. In a letter from a Birmingham jail, Martin Luther King says "we know through a lot of painful experiences that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed… justice too long delayed is too long denied". And we have to fight the system and unjust laws, like closing Wells Fargo because they are the main source that is investing in the detention centers of our people, boycotting Mi Pueblo a super market that ran background checks on its workers and fired so many workers that worked there for years when the owner was once undocumented himself, protesting Pacific Steel a company that fired a lot of their workers one a week before Christmas and left them without pay. "There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope sir you understand our legitimate and unavoidable impotence," writes Martin Luther King in A letter from a Birmingham Jail. I strongly believe in my heart that there comes a time when people get so tired of all the injustices that they see around them and just have to lash out to the main cause of their oppression, people have to wake up at some point because even sleeping beauty woke up from a spell. Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever.
For years my people have been taunted about what we "do not have". Put in our faces pictures of what real beauty is, and that what we look like isn't. Live in third world countries that have gorgeous landscapes, and yet we have been convinced that beauty is cities full of skyscrapers, city lights, and traffic. Migrated from beautiful lands full of grass and delicious crops in search of the American dream, the one that doesn't exist. We come from humble communities full of culture and tradition, introduced to busy streets full rushing citizens. Locked into a system that doesn't want to see us shine. Structural violence tries to keep us shut down yet we look for all ways to break free whether under the system or concrete we will break out of the oppression and set ourselves free. "Peace ultimately has to be obtained by changing social structures that are responsible for death, poverty, and malnutrition" – Martin Luther King. Change is gonna come.
With voting day just around the corner, Woolman students had a unique opportunity to engage with and critically analyze the political process in the United States. In Global Issues class, we are exploring what it means to be a "democratic" country and how democratic processes are manifested both in the US and around the world. We talk about the power behind voting in our representative democracy as well as access to voting and how different demographics of people living in the US are helped or hindered in participating in the democratic process. To our great fortune, the League of Women voters held a debate between the two congressional candidates for our district of California, Heidi Hall and Doug LaMalfa!! What better way to combing our theoretical class analysis with practical real-world happenings!
I was extremely pleased and proud of the level of engagement and excitement from the students surrounding the debate. They were wonderfully analytical of the candidates' platforms and presentations, and although our questions weren't chosen to be asked during the forum, we had an opportunity to meet the candidates afterwards and express our priorities and concerns to the prospective representatives. The topics of our inquiries to candidates ranged from marriage equality to climate change to immigration rights and more!


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RSQUARE ReviewsRSQUARE 4
"It was a very good experience "
- Comp & Benefits
- Work/Life Balance
- Senior Management
- Culture & Values
- Career Opportunities
I have been working at RSQUAREPros
Human Resource is willing to help you when needed.Cons
Last 3-4 months it was difficult to get a response from representative/recruiter.RecommendsPositive OutlookNo opinion of CEO
RSQUARE Interviews
Interview Experience
Interview Experience
Getting an Interview
Getting an Interview
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- Application Details
I applied through a recruiter. The process took a day – interviewed at RSQUARE in July 2013.Interview Details
I was contacted by a recruiter who found my resume online, about coming in for an interview. As I had not applied to this company, I asked what position they were interviewing me for. The recruiter said she couldn't tell me, that the manager would let me know when I get there.Interview Questions
Reasons for Declining
- "What position are you interviewing for?" View Answer
Well I still don't know what the position is, what it pays, or what their expectations are, so I haven't declined or accepted until I get more informationDeclined OfferNegative ExperienceEasy Interview
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subset: commoncrawl


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The location is excellent. From metro station Trindade you should cross the street, turn right and walk about 50 metres uphill. To get from the hotel to the very centre it takes you max 5-10 min.
The design of the hotel is interesting and pleasant, our room and bathroom were surprisingly spacious, at arrival they gave us port
vouchers, which we used at the hotel bar. In the room there are tea and coffe maker and the fridge. Every day we got 2 (free) bottles of water, which was very nice as wel - Anonymous
We like their staff, Jose, who is very helpful and friendly. Oportoinn is new and the design of the place is simple, modern and clean. Facilities were good. Location is not far from metro and central area. However walking to uphill and downhill was a bit hard for me. - Anonymous
The location of the hostel was very close to the heart of the city and the hostel was clean and have a terrace to hang out with friends and have a drink together after a day long tour. The hostel also organizes pub crawls and city tours. the staffs were friendly and individual lockers were available for all. - Anonymous
The owner/operator of the apartment was super friendly and very helpful - we arrived to store our luggage and he was there waiting for us, and we were 1 hour late checking in and he didn't mind at all! The apartment itself was spacious, clean and suited our needs to a tee.
It is ideally situated about 150m from Trindade train station and about a 20min walk or 1 metro stop from the river Douro.
I will definitely be staying here again when next in Porto - excellent value for money! - Anonymous
cortesia dello staff, posizione centrale, pulizia degli ambienti, comfort della camera - Anonymous


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One-liner test cases
There are many kinds of testing. Detailled scripted manual test cases are quite popular but an article at testzonen.se might be an eye-opener if that is your favourite kind of test case. According to the article, these test cases are a waste of time and effort and demeaning to the testers. Instead they advocate a… Read More »


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The Sacramento Area's 1st Live Action Zombie Tag Game starts its 4th year of Survive with Survive Rancho the first instance of TMD's Project:Contagion in partnership with Cordova Recreation and Park District.
--It will also feature the High School of the Dead mini game--
(Fundraiser/Competition to raise money for a local HS)
$10 Pre-reg www.play2survive.com
$15 Walk-up Registration
The Survive Event is a large scale outdoor game that requires it's players to complete a simple task. Travel across the field of play to the designated checkpoints and make it back to Headquarters...
… but there's one catch. They must outrun and outwit the intelligent and agile zombies that wish to feast upon their flesh, and thus growing the numbers of the zombie horde!
The stage is set and the rules are simple and straightforward.
1.Dress-code: Come in attire appropriate for physical participation, but themed costumes are always encouraged! Local make-up artists sometimes join us to help you out!
2.We respect both humans and zombies alike, so with that in mind, all tagging and evading must be done in a respectful manner.
3.No artificial modes of transportation and all infections must be done by touching the uninfected with two hands at the same time.
4.Glow-sticks (wristbands or sticks) of specific colors identify "uninfected" players. Every life (glow-stick) shares an ID with its player. Only that player will be able to use it to progress through the game. When a zombie infects an uninfected player, they must give that zombie their glow-stick. Now, as an infected player, can start collecting lives.
5.Checkpoints are set up across the field of play and each are delineated as safe-zones where no infections are allowed. Headquarters is also considered a safe-zone. Uninfected players will check-in with a Game Master who will record the player's number to give them credit for that checkpoint. But watch-out! There could be zombies hiding just outside the safe-zone!
Collecting Points & Winning!
At registration, each player is assigned a number and must indicate if they are playing Survive Solo or on a Survive Squad (up to 5 players), and if their points go to a specific organization, if applicable. There are prizes for a Survive Solo player, the winning Survive Squad AND a portion of the proceeds oftentimes benefits a partnering organization. The event prize structure will be determine based on the school, organization or other local sponsoring group.
High School of the Dead mini game:
The High School of the Dead Fundraiser (HSDF) is a mini game that will be featured in some if not all of the Project: Contagion series. It's focus is to provide a competition based incentive for players where they will earn points for the High School of their choice. 30% of the events proceeds will be donated to the co-curricular program fund of the school that earns the most points. The Survive events that include the HSDF mini game will be held in collaboration with local Parks and Rec Districts. So in addition to the 30% of proceeds that will be given to the winning High School, another 30% of the proceeds will be allocated to the Parks and Rec district hosting the event.
The mini-game is not limited to participants the high school students. We encourage parents, teachers, staff, etc. to come out and enjoy the fun. When players register to play either online or on the day of the event they can designate which high school their points will go towards. By participating virtually anyone can help raise money for local education programs that greatly needs financial assistance.
Points will be earned in a number of ways:
Zombie kills (successful TWO HAND tag of an uninfected player)
Check ins
Survival bonus
Bonus check ins
Bonus flags
Check-out our website to get the High School of your choice involved! http://www.play2survive.com/hsdf/
Like us on facebook to get updates and more information
_-see you @ HQ-_
I decided to start Reno Motorcycle Riders Group because I wanted to be part of a group of people who enjoyed my passion... I was excited and nervous. Our group has grown by leaps and bounds. I never thought it would be this big.
— Henry, started Reno Motorcycle Riders
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The Design Build Institute of America (DBIA) Great Lakes Region is among the industry's preeminent resources for leadership, education, objective expertise and best practices for the successful integrated delivery of capital projects.
DBIA-GLR promotes the value of design-build project delivery and teaches the effective integration of design and construction services to ensure success for owners and design and construction practitioners.
- Excellence in integrated design-build project delivery, producing high value outcomes
- An environment of trust characterized by integrity and honest communication
- Mutual respect for and appreciation of diverse perspectives and ideas
- A commitment to innovation and creativity to drive quality, value and sustainability
- Professionalism, fairness and the highest level of ethical behavior
2015 Upcoming Events
March Program with SMPS: Building a Winning Team for Design-Build Proposals
Wednesday, March 11: Petterino's, Chicago, IL
Click here to learn more about this and other upcoming events!
March DBIA-GLR Central Indiana Chapter Meeting
Tuesday, March 24: The Alexander, Indianapolis
Click here to learn more about this and other upcoming events!


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An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Buckinghamshire, Volume 1, South
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text: http://askubuntu.com – My headset broke recently and now only left side of it works. In some songs, there are parts that are only played through the right side and since my right side doesn't work, I can't hear them. I want to set the sound so it only plays on the left side. I tried changing the balance settings in sound preferences, but it only mutes the right channel, doesn't make it play through the left channel. How can I do this? (HowTos)


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New Stem Cell Method Could Allay Ethics Concerns
New Stem Cell Method Could Allay Ethics Concerns
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i3DTutorials has a new training product for SOFTIMAGE|XSI -- RENDERING WITH SOFTIMAGE|XSI V.I: MENTAL RAY.
This latest offering from the growing i3DTutorials library of SOFTIMAGE|XSI training products, teaches artists advanced production techniques for using the industry standard mental ray renderer to create imagery of exquisite and stunning detail. Emphasizing production proven techniques, users are taken through a series of demanding production scenes that mimic the complex scenarios and problems commonly found when producing renders for production. Learn new features and tools in SOFTIMAGE|XSI 7 that will allow you to take advantage of the latest mental ray technology and take your renders to the next level.
Some highlights include: Photographic Exposure, Portal Lights, Ambient Occlusion Caching, Importons, Color Management, Tone Mapping, and much more. By taking you through the entire production process of rendering with these new features and showing you how the tools you learned apply to industry work and production, artists will have a more profound learning experience and understanding of how to use their newfound knowledge in a production environment. Addressing the need and demand for professional training for SOFTIMAGE|XSI, RENDERING WITH SOFTIMAGE|XSI V.I: MENTAL RAY teaches the techniques needed to truly take advantage of the power of SOFTIMAGE|XSI 7 and mental ray.
For more information, visit: http://www.i3dtutorials.com/tutorial/51_rendering-with-softimage-xsi-v-i....


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Roof coating vs. insulation? or?
Hi all,
Not sure this is the right forum - I'm surprised there isn't a roofing forum - so let me know if you think I should post elsewhere (this old house? i have no idea....usually i'm over in gardens)
I've got a garage work studio that we upgraded last summer. (I've posted around here before about the skylight - which as of yesterday is covered with a solar "hair net" style cover..)
The building is very very hot - the ceiling is hot to the touch, and seems to be radiating a lot of heat, though the SO blames the cracks around the garage door and says the heat is just heat rising in the room. ?
I've got three layers of shadecloth hung on the 2 car garage door which helps with that surface. My standalone a/c unit isn't able to cool it below 90' today....I work in this space every day so it is driving me nuts.
Some things I'm considering:
- blowing in insulation to the somewhat shallow sloped roof
- roof coatings to reflect heat like coatncool - no hoa so not a problem, but I just read that it's a controversial idea for asphalt shingles.
- obviously sealing up the cracks as best as I can between garage door and wall, below garage door. The room is drywalled and finished otherwise.
Any advice about how to rank the issues I'm facing? I'd love to hear opinions about what the biggest heat gain causes are, and how I should approach a holistic kind of program to make this building more efficient.
thanks much all.
It sounds like the garage has a shallow pitched roof and there is no attic separating the roof deck and your work area. Is this correct?
If this is the case, then my suggestion would be to add a finished ceiling to create an attic and then add insulation to the attic floor. You should also add ventilation to allow the hot air to escape.
The other option would be to spray foam the roof deck. My only concern would be trapping moisture between the foam and the roof deck. The application has to be correctly in order to avoid problems in the future.
I think it is a bad idea to put any coating on an asphalt shingle. Sealing any opening around the doors should be done but in my opinion the majority of the heat is coming through the roof.
Ditto what Mike said.
You need to look at radiant heat barriers for the garage roof. I've used RMax (shiny side out) with an air gap between the RMax and the underside of the roof decking between the joists. The air gap needs to be vented at the ridge and the eves. Then use fiberglass for the remaining space between the joists.
This, of course, requires removing the drywall from the ceiling of the space to insulate it.
I took a picture to clarify - it's got a low slope and this funny pitch on the garage door facing side. The ceiling inside is already finished - drywalled, mudded painting. The ceiling inside is sloped with the ceiling - though there is a larger "attic" at that steep pitch bit.
So really there isn't an attic which means I can't insulate it? Or is there still a way to cut a hole in the drywall and blow in insulation?
Also - would it help to have a vent in the ceiling/roof - at least to vent out the heat at the ceiling? I'm considering replacing the acrylic skylight with a vented one that at least I could open to let heat escape. But maybe a spinning vent would help? Or a vent just into the tiny attic part of the roof?
When we refinished the building my understanding with the contractor was that he would add insulation - it was just clapboard before, no drywall, no stucco. But at the end he denied that was the deal and I think he just got frustrated with the building and wanted to be done. ;( But now it may be too late to fix it?
Sorry I'm a huge newbie to large scale construction - I'm handy with a lot of things but don't have a grasp of roofing at all.
one other related question - if i were looking to have an expert come out and look at the building - what kind of expert should i be looking for? roof specialist? general contractor? seems like hvac folks install hvac systems and i need more general advice about how to fix/repair/improve energy efficiency. energy auditor? any suggestions appreciated!!!
"When we refinished the building my understanding with the contractor was that he would add insulation - it was just clapboard before, no drywall, no stucco. But at the end he denied that was the deal and I think he just got frustrated with the building and wanted to be done."
Are you saying the contractor who finished the garage did not install any insulation in the ceiling or walls?
yes, that is what i'm saying. just to be clear. (not yes he installed insulation....)
*no insulation* - but i thought he was going to install it originally - he said at the last minute that there was no room for it - which maybe is true *now* based on how he installed the ceiling?
If the walls are built with 2X4 studs then there is room is install R13 insulation batts. There was no excuse not to do that.
As for the ceiling, I assume the structure was built with 2X10 joists. It would not have been very difficult to install insulation batts from below and stable them into place. If there was very little room, then spray foam would have been a good solution. He should at least given you the option even if he wanted more money.
You need to bring in an insulation contractor and see what can be done. If your goal is to make the garage an working office, then it may be easier to remove the sheet rock, insulate, and finish the floors and ceiling.
"There was no excuse not to do that. " yes, i agree. especially since it was in the contract. i got a bit bullied at the end because he got behind and stressed out...another thing would be to call him and try to make him fulfill the contract, but i'm afraid he would say it isn't possible (what he said last year, after he agreed to do it.)
removing the entire ceiling, installing all new drywall and finishing it seems really overwhelming and expensive and horrible since this ceiling is less than a year old (and i did all the finishing myself which was a lot of work)
thus my attempt to find another solution - like blown in insulation, venting, or roof coating. everyone agrees that these aren't real options and that removing the whole ceiling is the only way to insulate it?
one last gasp: would a vent in the pitch like my drawing help at all?
That is a very weird roof. You have to make your modifications with your climate in consideration. I'd talk to a local energy rater and have them look at your house while they are at it. They should know solutions compatible with your climate and will have eyes on it allowing them to make recommendations that will be the most economic. Check out resent.us. A good resource for reading up on this sort of thing is building science.com.


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Before The Internet, People Used Other Ways To Wake Up
Back before the existence of the world wide web, people had to think up some creative ways to wake themselves up on time in the morning.
This post was created by a user and has not been vetted or endorsed by BuzzFeed's editorial staff. It is also not paid advertising. BuzzFeed Community is a place where anyone can post awesome lists and creations. Learn more or post your buzz!


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Northeastern University Says No to Chick-fil-A
March 1, 2012 by HRC staff
The following post comes from HRC Digital Media Intern Eric Cameron:
Responding to a widely supported student resolution, Northeastern University officials have canceled a pending contract with anti-LGBT food chain Chick-fil-A.
Research published late last year by Equality Matters showed WinShape -- Chick-fil-A's charitable branch -- donating nearly $2 million to vehemently anti-LGBT organizations in 2009 alone.
After discovering possible plans to open a Chick-fil-A in the university's student center, members of the student body took action. A petition opposing the chain quickly gained 300 signatures, and a resolution denouncing the chain for its anti-LGBT policies passed 31-5 in the student Senate earlier this week.
University officials responded favorably to the student government's resolution. "We are proud of the decision that affirms our university's commitment to be an inclusive, diverse community that is respectful of all," said university spokeswoman Renata Nyul in a statement to the Boston Herald.
A similar petition to remove Chick-fil-A from the cafeteria of a New York University dorm is currently surging into prominence on Change.org. With almost 11,000 signatures already collected, NYC's only current Chick-fil-A may soon be history as well.
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February 14, 2015
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February 16, 2015
"Love Has No Labels" Ad Campaign Celebrates Diversity and Inclusion
February 18, 2015


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Canstar Community News - ONLINE EDITION
Charges upgraded after Elmwood stabbing
Winnipeg police have made an arrest in connection with an attempted murder in Elmwood.
Police were dispatched to the first 100 block of Noble Avenue shortly before midnight on Feb. 8, and found a 19-year-old male, who has been identified as Marcus Neil Blacksmith, was suffering from stab wounds to his upper body. The man was transported to hospital in critical condition. He died on Feb. 11.
A 19-year-old male, Jordan Thomas Munroe, was arrested at the scene, and after an investigation by the Major Crimes Unit, was initially charged with attempted murder and aggravated assault, but the charges have now been upgraded to second-degree murder.
After an investigation, police allege that Munroe, Blacksmith, and another person were socializing when an argument between Munroe and Blacksmith broke out, resulting in Munroe being evicted from the home. Police say Munroe returned to get his coat, but the argument continued and escalated, at which point Munroe is alleged to have taken a knife and stabbed the victim in the upper body.
Munroe was detained at the Provincial Remand Centre.
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(1 of 8 articles for this week)
Leaving it all on the table03/27/2015 9:24 AM 0
This Just In
@CanstarHeadline: Headingley residents nominated for YMCA-YWCA Women of Distinction awards. winnipegfreepress.com/our-communitie… #cbn 12:13 pm on Mar 30
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Archive for the 'Infoskills' Category
Assessing Data Wrangling Skills – Conversations With Data
By chance, a couple of days ago I stumbled across a spreadsheet summarising awarded PFI contracts as of 2013 (private finance initiative projects, 2013 summary data).
The spreadsheet has 800 or so rows, and a multitude of columns, some of which are essentially grouped (although multi-level, hierarchical headings are not explicitly used) – columns relating to (estimated) spend in different tax years, for example, or the equity partners involved in a particular project.
As part of the OU course we're currently developing on "data", we're exploring an assessment framework based on students running small data investigations, documented using IPython notebooks, in which we will expect students to demonstrate a range of technical and analytical skills, as well as some understanding of data structures and shapes, data management technology and policy choices, and so on. In support of this, I've been trying to put together one or two notebooks a week over the course of a few hours to see what sorts of thing might be possible, tractable and appropriate for inclusion in such a data investigation report within the time constraints allowed.
To this end, the Quick Look at UK PFI Contracts Data notebook demonstrates some of the ways in which we might learn something about the data contained within the PFI summary data spreadsheet. The first thing to note is that it's not really a data investigation: there is no specific question I set out to ask, and no specific theme I set out to explore. It's more exploratory (that is, rambling!) than that. It has more of the form what I've started referring to as a conversation with data.
In a conversation with data, we develop an understanding of what the data may have to say, along with a set of tools (that is, recipes, or even functions) that allow us to talk to it more easily. These tools and recipes are reusable within the context of the data set or datasets selected for the conversation, and may be transferrable to other data conversations. For example, one recipe might be how to filter and summarise a dataset in a particular way, or generate a particular view or reshaping of it that makes it easy to ask a particular sort of question, or generate a particular sort of a chart (creating a chart is like asking a question where the surface answer is returned in a graphical form).
If we are going to use IPython notebook documented conversations with data as part of an assessment process, we need to tighten up a little more how we might expect to see them structured and what we might expect to see contained within them.
Quickly skimming through the PFI conversation, elements of the following skills are demonstrated:
– downloading a dataset from a remote location;
– loading it into an appropriate data representation;
– cleaning (and type casting) the data;
– spotting possibly erroneous data;
– subsetting/filtering the data by row and column, including the use of partial string matching;
– generating multiple views over the data;
– reshaping the data;
– using grouping as the basis for the generation of summary data;
– sorting the data;
– joining different data views;
– generating graphical charts from derived data using "native" matplotlib charts and a separate charting library (ggplot);
– generating text based interpretations of the data ("data2text" or "data textualisation").
The notebook also demonstrates some elements of reflection about how the data might be used. For example, it might be used in association with other datasets to help people keep track of the performance of facilities funded under PFI contracts.
Note: the notebook I link to above does not include any database management system elements. As such, it represents elements that might be appropriate for inclusion in a report from the first third of our data course – which covers basic principles of data wrangling using pandas as the dominant toolkit. Conversations held later in the course should also demonstrate how to get data into an out of an appropriately chosen database management system, for example.
AP Business Wire Service Takes on Algowriters
Via @simonperry, news that AP will use robots to write some business stories (Automated Insights are one of several companies I've been tracking over the years who are involved in such activities, eg Notes on Narrative Science and Automated Insights).
The claim is that using algorithms to do the procedural writing opens up time for the journalists to do more of the sensemaking. One way I see this is that we can use data2text techniques to produce human readable press releases of things like statistical releases, which has a couple of advantages at least.
Firstly, the grunt – and error prone – work of running the numbers (calculating month on month or year on year changes, handling seasonal adjustments etc) can be handled by machines using transparent and reproducible algorithms. Secondly, churning numbers into simple words ("x went up month on month from Sept 2013 to Oct 2013 and down year on year from 2012″) makes them searchable using words, rather than having to write our own database or spreadsheet queries with lots of inequalities in them.
In this respect, something that's been on my to do list for way to long is to produce some simple "press release" generators based on ONS releases (something I touched on in Data Textualisation – Making Human Readable Sense of Data).
Matt Waite's upcoming course on "automated story bots" looks like it might produce some handy resources in this regard (code repo). In the meantime, he already shared the code described in How to write 261 leads in a fraction of a second here: ucr-story-bot.
For the longer term, on my "to ponder" list is what might something like "The Grammar of Graphics" be for data textualisation? (For background, see A Simple Introduction to the Graphing Philosophy of ggplot2.)
For example, what might a ggplot2 inspired gtplot library look like for converting data tables not into chart elements, but textual elements? Does it even make sense to try to construct such a grammar? What would the corollaries to aesthetics, geoms and scales be?
I think I perhaps need to mock-up some examples to see if anything comes to mind and that the function names, as well as the outputs, might look like, let alone the code to implement them! Or maybe code first is the way, to get a feel for how to build up the grammar from sensible looking implementation elements? Or more likely, perhaps a bit of iteration may be required?!
Writing Diagrams – Boxes and Arrows
If you've ever had to draw "blocks and arrows" diagrams, you'll know how irritating it can be if you spend hours laying out the diagram using a presentation editor or drawing tool, only to find you need to edit the drawing, add another box, and lay the whole thing out again.
Surely there must be a better way?
Let's just think about what a box and arrow diagram is intended to show: when describing a process, the connections typically represent a flow from one thing to another; furthermore, the layout is often rectilinear, laid out along straight lines, the boxes tidily spaced and their edges lined up with each other. In a diagram such as a mindmap, different ideas or concepts are related to each other by drawing a line between them and the layout may be more fluid, with like or related concepts grouped together in space, or by the additional use of colour themes, for example.
The primary information contained in the diagram are the text elements and the connections between them. The positioning on the page often reflects the structure of these connections. When we lay out a diagram, we unconsciously favour layouts that minimise the number of crossed lines (to keep the diagram "clean" looking), and group connected items close together (unless some other information requires us to separate them – for example, we might be using a timeline basis for a horizontal x-axis and placing boxes in areas of the canvas we are working on that are associated with a particular month).
The online Google Drawing document type is typical of drawing tools included in many office applications. As well as being able to draw boxes and connect registration points on each box by lines or arrows, a range of layout tools provides support for aligning and spacing boxes.
Tools such as popplet provide a friendlier environment for generating similar sorts of diagram:
Whilst drawing tools such as these allow you to craft your diagram by hand, building it up as you go along, actually putting previously collected information into blocks on the canvas, let alone connecting the blocks together and laying them out nicely, may be quite an involved and error prone affair.
In these circumstances, it may make more sense to take a raw representation of the block contents and a simple representation of connections between appropriate blocks and just write the relationships down, letting a drawing tool do the hard work of drawing the blocks, connecting them together and laying them out, at least in draft layout form. To provide for a final layer of customisation, it might also be useful to be able to take a vector/SVG representation of the automatically sketched layout into a drawing package where it can be tidied up by hand and the application of a human designer's eye.
There are several online tools available that you can use to sketch box and arrow diagrams from simple text descriptions.
Text2Mindmap allows you to construct tree based mindmaps from a simple outline style description of the mindmap.
The layout has a radial basis. Designs can be saved and images downloaded as JPG or PDF files.
Diagrammr allows you to draw simple graph based network structures in which text labelled block elements can be connected to other blocks by labelled edges.
Designs are given a persistent URL, but anyone with access to the URL can edit the diagram.
JS Sequence Diagrams
JS Sequence Diagrams is a javascript library for generating sequence diagrams from a textual description of them.
Diagrams can be saved as SVG files. The source code is available and depends on Jison and Raphaël as the graphics library.
blockdiag (application) uses a language similar to the DOT language for describing a range of block diagram types (block diagrams, sequence diagrams, activity diagrams, logical network diagrams).
Diagrams can be saved as SVG diagrams and associated with a URL that contains all the information used to recreate the diagram. As such, large diagrams are not supported if they make the URL too long. Source code is available.
Several diagram types are available using blockdiag, including graphviz diagrams constructed using the DOT language.
GraphvizFiddle is a fiddler style application that lets you enter ,a href="http://www.graphviz.org/content/dot-language">Graphviz DOT language descriptions and preview the result.
Files can be generated in SVG format, or a textual definitions (for example, in the dot layout language).
Generating boxes and arrows style diagrams can be a pain at times because the semantics of the diagram – how one item is related to another – is represented in a graphical rather than data based form. By writing down the relations and then automatically generating visual representations of them, we retain access to the data representation whilst letting the hard work of generating the initial draft, at least, of the layout to a machine.
Several tools are available to support the creation of such literally described box and arrow diagrams using a variety of description languages and generating a range of output image formats (SVG probably being the most useful if you need to edit the sketch diagram for yourself to tweak the layout for its final presentation). Code for some of the tools (JS Sequence diagrams, blockdiag) is available.
Arguably the most powerful tools allow you to "write" diagrams using the Graphviz DOT layout language. Whilst there is a certain overhead associated with learning this language, it does save time in the long run if you regularly need to create network style diagrams. Graphviz also supports a range of layout algorithms – see the Graphviz gallery for examples.
PS If you want to write your own diagramming application, the JointJS library looks like a handy library to have on hand… The Venn.js library also looks quite pretty – if you have to generate Venn diagrams, that is!
Time to Drop Calculators in Favour of Notebook Programming?
With the UK national curriculum for schools set to include a healthy dose of programming from September 2014 (Statutory guidance – National curriculum in England: computing programmes of study) I'm wondering what the diff will be on the school day (what gets dropped if computing is forced in?) and who'll be teaching it?
A few years ago I spent way too much time engaged in robotics related school outreach activities. One of the driving ideas was that we could use practical and creative robotics as a hands-on platform in a variety of curriculum context: maths and robotics, for example, or science and robotics. We also ran some robot fashion shows – I particularly remember a two(?) day event at the Quay Arts Centre on the Isle of Wight where a couple of dozen or so kids put on a fashion show with tabletop robots – building and programming the robots, designing fashion dolls to sit on them, choosing the music, doing the lights, videoing the show, and then running the show itself in front of a live audience. Brilliant.
On the science side, we ran an extended intervention with the Pompey Study Centre, a study centre attached to the Portsmouth Football Club, that explored scientific principles in the context of robot football. As part of the 'fitness training' programme for the robot footballers, the kids had to run scientific experiments as they calibrated and configured their robots.
The robot platform – mechanical design, writing control programmes, working with sensors, understanding interactions with the real world, dealing with uncertainty – provided a medium for creative problem solving that could provide a context for, or be contextualised by, the academic principles being taught from a range of curriculum areas. The emphasis was very much on learning by doing, using an authentic problem solving context to motivate the learning of principles in order to be able to solve problems better or more easily. The idea was that kids should be able to see what the point was, and rehearse the ideas, strategies and techniques of informed problem solving inside the classroom that they might then be able to draw on outside the classroom, or in other classrooms. Needless to say, we were disrespectful of curriculum boundaries and felt free to draw on other curriculum areas when working within a particular curriculum area.
In many respects, robotics provides a great container for teaching pragmatic and practical computing. But robot kit is still pricey and if not used across curriculum areas can be hard for schools to afford. There are also issues of teacher skilling, and the set-up and tear-down time required when working with robot kits across several different classes over the same school day or week.
So how is the new computing curriculum teaching going to be delivered? One approach that I think could have promise if kids are expected to used text based programming languages (which they are required to do at KS3) is to use a notebook style programming environment. The first notebook style environment I came across was Mathematica, though expensive license fees mean I've never really used it (Using a Notebook Interface).
More recently, I've started playing with IPython Notebooks ("ipynb"; for example, Doodling With IPython Notebooks for Education).
(Start at 2 minutes 16 seconds in – I'm not sure that WordPress embeds respect the time anchor I set. Yet another piece of hosted WordPress crapness.)
For a history of IPython Notebooks, see The IPython notebook: a historical retrospective.
Whilst these can be used for teaching programming, they can also be used for doing simple arithmetic, calculator style, as well as simple graph plotting. If we're going to teach kids to use calculators, then maybe:
1) we should be teaching them to use "found calculators", such as on their phone, via the Google search box, in those two-dimensional programming surfaces we call spreadsheets, using tools such as WolframAlpha, etc;
2) maybe we shouldn't be teaching them to use calculators at all? Maybe instead we should be teaching them to use "programmatic calculations", as for example in Mathematica, or IPython Notebooks?
Maths is a tool and a language, and notebook environments, or other forms of (inter)active, executable worksheets that can be constructed and or annotated by learners, experimented with, and whose exercises can be repeated, provide a great environment for exploring how to use and work with that language. They're also great for learning how the automated execution of mathematical statements can allow you to do mathematical work far more easily than you can do by hand. (This is something I think we often miss when teaching kids the mechanics of maths – they never get a chance to execute powerful mathematical ideas with computational tool support. One argument against using tools is that kids don't learn to spot when a result a calculator gives is nonsense if they don't also learn the mechanics by hand. I don't think many people are that great at estimating numbers even across orders of magnitude even with the maths that they have learned to do by hand, so I don't really rate that argument!)
Maybe it's because I'm looking for signs of uptake of notebook ideas, or maybe it's because it's an emerging thing, but I noticed another example of notebook working again today, courtesy of @alexbilbie: reports written over Neo4J graph databases submitted to the Neo4j graph gist winter challenge. The GraphGist how to guide looks like they're using a port of, or extensions to, an IPython Notebook, though I've not checked…
Note that IPython notebooks have access to the shell, so other languages can be used within them if appropriate support is provided. For example, we can use R code in the IPython notebook context.
Note that interactive, computationaal and data analysis notebooks are also starting to gain traction in certain areas of research under the moniker "reproducible research". An example I came across just the other day was The Dataverse Network Project, and an R package that provides an interface to it: dvn – Sharing Reproducible Research from R.
In much the same way that I used to teach programming as a technique for working with robots, we can also teach programming in the context of data analysis. A major issue here is how we get data in to and out of a programming environment in an seamless way. Increasingly, data sources hosted online are presenting APIs (programmable interfaces) with wrappers that provide a nice interface to a particular programming language. This makes it easy to use a function call in the programming language to pull data into the programme context. Working with data, particularly when it comes to charting data, provides another authentic hook between maths and programming. Using them together allows us to present each as a tool that works with the other, helping answer the question "but why are learning this?" with the response "so now you can do this, see this, work with this, find this out", etc. (I appreciate this is quite a utilitarian view of the value of knowledge…)
But how far can we go in terms of using "raw", but very powerful, computational tools in school? The other day, I saw this preview of the Wolfram Language:
There is likely to be a cost barrier to using this language, but I wonder: why shouldn't we use this style of language, or at least the notebook style of computing, in KS3 and 4? What are the barriers (aside from licensing cost and machine access) to using such a medium for teaching computing in context (in maths, in science, in geography, etc)?
Programming puritans might say that notebook style computing isn't real programming… (I'm not sure why, but I could imagine they might… erm… anyone fancy arguing that line in the comments?!:-) But so what? We don't want to teach everyone to be a programmer, but we do maybe want to help them realise what sorts of computational levers there are, even if they don't become computational mechanics?
An(other Attempt at an) Intro to Data Journalism…
I was pleased to be invited back to the University of Lincoln again yesterday to give a talk on data journalism to a couple of dozen or so journalism students…
I've posted a copy of the slides, as well as a set of annotated handouts onto slideshare, and to get a bump in my slideshare stats for meaningless page views, I've embedded the latter here too…
I was hoping to generate a copy of the slides (as images) embedded in a markdown version of the notes but couldn't come up with a quick recipe for achieving that…
When I get a chance, it looks as if the easiest way will be to learn some VBA/Visual Basic for Applications macro scripting… So for example:
* How do I export powerpoint slide notes to individual text files?
* Using VBA To Export PowerPoint Slides To Images
If anyone beats me to it, I'm actually on a Mac, so from the looks of things on Stack Overflow, hacks will be required to get the VBA to actually work properly?
Doodling With IPython Notebooks for Education
One of the big issues when it comes to working with data is that things are often done most easily using small fragments of code. Something I've been playing with recently are IPython notebooks, which provide an interactive browser based interface to a Python shell.
The notebooks are built around the idea of cells of various types, including header and markdown/HTML interpreted cells and executable code cells. Here are a few immediate thoughts on how we might start to use these notebooks to support distance and self-paced education:
The output from executing a code cell is displayed in the lower part of the cell when the cell is run. Code execution causes state changes in the underlying IPython session, the current state of which is accessible to all cells.
Graphical outputs, such as chart objects generated using libraries such as matplotlib, can also be displayed inline (not shown).
There are several ways we might include a call to action for students:
* invitations to run code cells;
* invitations to edit and run code cells;
* invitations to enter commentary or reflective notes.
We can also explore ways of providing "revealed" content. One way is to make use of the ability to execute code, for example by importing a crib class that we can call…
Here's how we might prompt its use:
That mechanic is quite clunky and doesn't have very good production values. It would be far cleaner if we could integrate reveals at the higher presentation level. Since markdown cells allow the inclusion of styled HTML and javascript, we could think about traditional e-learning reveals. For example, we might include an HTML button that can be clicked to reveal an answer:
All code cells in a notebook can be executed one after another, or a cell at a time (You can also execute all cells above or below the cursor). This makes for easy testing of the notebook and self-paced working through it.
A helper application, nbconvert, allows you to generate alternative versions of a notebook, whether as HTML, python code, latex, or HTML slides (reveal.js). There is also a notebook viewer available that displays an HTML view of a specified ipynb notebook. (There is also an online version: IPython notebook viewer.)
Another advantage of the browser based approach is that the IPython shell can run in a virtual machine (for example, Cursory Thoughts on Virtual Machines in Distance Education Courses) and expose the notebook as a service that can be accessed via a browser on a host machine:
A simple configuration tweak allows notebook files and data files to occupy a folder that is shared across both the host machine and the guest virtual machine.
It is also possible to run remote notebook servers that can be accessed via the web. It would be nice if institutional IT services could support the sort of Agile EdTech that Jim Groom has been writing about recently, that would allow course teams developers to experiment with this sort of technology quickly and easily, but in the meantime, we can still do it ourselves…
For example, I am currently running a couple of virtual machines whose configurations I have "borrowed" from elsewhere – Matthew Russell's Mining the Social Web 2nd Edition VM, and @datamineruk's pandas infinite-intern machine.
I've only really just started exploring what may be possible with IPython notebooks, and how we might be able to use them as part of an e-learning course offering. If you've seen any particularly good (or bad!) examples of IPython notebooks being used in an educational context, please let me know via the comments…:-)
Progress Tracking Google Docs as Tasks?
As part of a new course I'm working on, the course team has been making use of shared Google docs for working up the course proposal and "D0″ (zero'th draft; key topics to be covered in each of the weekly sessions). Although the course production hasn't been approved yet, we've started drafting the actual course materials, with an agreement to share them for comment via Google docs.
The approach I've taken is to created a shared folder with the rest of the course teams, and set up documents for each of the weekly sessions I've taken the lead on.
The documents in this folder are all available to other members of the course team – for reference and /or comment – at any time, and represent the "live"/most current version of each document I'm working on. I suspect that others in the course team may take a more cautious approach, only sharing a doc when it's in a suitable state for handover – or at least, comment – but that's fine too. My docs can of course be used that way as well – no-one has to look at them until I do "hand them over" for full comment at the end of the first draft stage.
But what if others, such as the course team chair or course manager, do want to keep check on progress over the coming weeks?
The file listing shown above doesn't give a lot away about the stare of each document, not even a file size, only when it was last worked on. So it struck me that it might be useful to have a visual indicator (such as a horizontal progress bar) about the progress on each document so that someone looking at the listing would know whether there was any point opening a document to have a look inside at all…
..because at the current time, a lot of the docs are just stubs, identifying tasks to be done.
Progress could be measured by proxy indicators, such as file size, "page count" equivalent, or line count. In these cases, the progress meter could be updated automatically. Additional insight could be provided by associating a target line count or page length metadata element, providing additional feedback to the author about progress with respect to that target. If a document exceeds the planned length, the progress meter should carry on going, possibly with a different colour denoting the overrun.
There are a couple of problems at least with this approach – documents that are being worked on may blend scruffy working notes along with actual "finished" text; several versions of the same paragraph may exist as authors try out different approaches, all adding to the line count. Long copied chunks from other sources may be in the text as working references, and so on.
So how about an additional piece of metadata for docs additionally tagged as "task" type in which a user can set a quick progress percentage estimate (a slider widget would make this easy to update) that is displayed in a bar on the file listing. Anyone checking the folder could then – at a glance – see which docs were worth looking at based on progress within the document-as-task. (Of course, having metadata available also opens up the possibility of additional mission creeping features, rulesets for generating alerts when a doc hits a particular percentage completion, for example.)
I'm not looking for more project management tools to take time away from a task, but in this case think the simple addition of a "progress" metadata element could weave an element of project management support into this sort of workflow? (changing the title of the doc would be another way – eg adding (20% done) to the title…
Thinks: hmm, I procrastinating, aren't I? I should really be working on one of those docs…;-)