Monthly Archives: April 2017

The State Board of Education voted Friday morning tomakes changes to how evolution will be presented in high school biology classes. But if you blink, you may miss them.

The new curriculum, first discussed in February, moves away from language that openly questions the theory of evolution while still leaving plenty of room for interpretation.

The previous standard written in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for science implied that experts were uncertain about the theory of evolution. It asked students to "evaluate" scientific explanations for cell complexity. Many educators advocated for this change because science on evolution is clear, and creationism, a religious theory that explains how life came to exist, is not.In an earlier vote on the topic, one UT Biology professor said, "Our education goals should not be based on opinion polls, but on the expertise of our teachers and experts."

With Friday's subtle change, students will now need to, instead, "compare and contrast" scientific explanation for cellular complexity. Oddly enough the word atthe center of discussion "evolution" was not mentioned once in Friday's discussion. Instead of questioning evolution, doubt was cast on whether amendments were "teachable" and whether or not "compare and contrast" should come before "explanations for cellular complexity."

Reflecting on the Texas Board of Education's ban of the controversial and straight up racist textbook Mexican American Heritage, the changes made today are another win against non-factual textbook standards.

This decision might cause ripples on a national scale as publishers usually cater to Texas School Board, one of the most influential in the country. California aside, Texas buys the most textbook of any state about 48 million textbooks every year.

Read the original:

Texas School Board Approves New "Evolution" Language - San Antonio Current

This week's State Board of Education debate about high school biology standards and governinghow to teach students about the theory of evolution could come down to a single word: evaluate.

At a February meeting, board members took a preliminary vote to modify those curriculum standards, keeping in language that would require students to challenge evolutionary science.

Republican board member Barbara Cargill, who led the charge to keep in the controversial language, has said requiring students to "evaluate" certain biological processes is necessary for thorough biology instruction.Critics say keeping the word "evaluate" in those standards casts doubt on evolution in a way that could open the door to teaching creationism.

The board is set to hold that debate Tuesday and will take another preliminary vote on whether to modifythe standards Wednesday, with a final vote set for Friday.

The Texas Tribune thanks its sponsors. Become one.

At the board's request in July, a 10-member committee of teachers and scientists took on the challenge of narrowing the biology curriculum standards known as Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, or TEKS. The committee removed four passages that Democrats on the board and activists say allow teachers to challenge evolution in the classroom, advancing creationist ideas.

After the board voted in February to put a few of those controversial standards back in the TEKS, educators on the committee were not happy. A few have said they did not intend to make a political statement by taking out the controversial standards. They did it to cut down on instructional time, as was their mandate, and to allow teachers more leeway for depth in the subject, said committee member Ron Wetherington, an anthropology professor at Southern Methodist University.

He called the board's changes to the standards"pretty toxic ... We just said, 'Evaluate is out the window and we're not even going to talk about it.'"Cargill's proposal would add nine additional days of teaching to a high school biology class, he said.

Republican board member Marty Rowley said he has received a lot of letters from constituents "wanting to make sure we allow teachers the space to teach the strengths and weaknesses of evolution, and that we cover them with the depth that allows our students to compete globally in science."

He said any suggestion that the standards would open the door to creationism is "unfounded. I don't think there's been any evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, that Texas biology teachers are teaching creationism in biology."

After February's vote, the committee sent the board a letter proposing a compromise.

The Texas Tribune thanks its sponsors. Become one.

In the letter, signed by all 10 members, the committee recommends the removal of the word "evaluate" from two of the science standards Cargill had pushed to add. The first standard asks high schoolers to compare and contrast eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells to "evaluate ... their complexity." The second asks students to "evaluate scientific explanations for the origin of DNA."

The committee wants board members to change the word "evaluate" to "identify."

"Although our recommended compromises will add some instructional time back into our calendar, they will not create significant instructional problems," the letter reads.

Rowley would not say Monday whether he planned to move forward with this compromise.

"When you have your classroom experts, your teachers, telling you this, it seems to me the board has some responsibility to give them some deference here," said Dan Quinn, who represents left-leaning State Board of Education watchdog Texas Freedom Network. "They know what they're doing."

Texas Freedom Network has been the main organization calling for the removal of the controversial science standards over the past several years, arguing they are a gateway to creationist alternatives to biological science. The proposed compromise, Quinn said, "looks very reasonable."

Related Tribune coverage:

Disclosure: Southern Methodist University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune.A complete list of Tribune donors and sponsors can be viewedhere.

Meet Paige: Our new Facebook Messenger bot helps you keep track of the 85th Legislature. Subscribe by messaging HELLO to m.me/texastribune.org. Learn more.

Continue reading here:

Texas education board to consider compromise on evolution standards - Texas Tribune

A couple of quick hits this week from the wonderful world of board games.

A few of my crazy creatures

First a great first impression with Evolution: Climate. This beautiful card game captures all of the turmoil and drama of nature and evolution in a nice tidy one hour playtime. Players create new species, add various traits, increase the population and size of their creatures and then hold on and try to survive the round without anything going hungry.

The basic gameplay is really approachable, but immediately some really interesting strategies arise from these simple rules. Do you make your species a carnivore, hoping theres another players species that you can manage to eat this round? Do you focus on more herbivore traits and try to grab as much food at the central watering hole before other players snatch it all up? Do you change size or develop defensive traits to fend off that jerk across the table who keeps eating your mutant furry turtles? These are just a few of challenges of this deep card game. This particular version also includes a climate element so that animals that do not have the proper warmth or cooling can be in big trouble depending on how the weather changes!

And really, I cant say enough about the art. These water color pictures could happily be wall art, but here there are dozens of these pieces tucked into a great game.

Roll for It!

The second game is one that I am surprised no one invented fiftyyears ago or so, as the basic concept of the game is incredibly simple. Its called Roll for It!, and thats exactly what you do. Players each have six dice, and there are cards laid out each turn that have a certain goal of what dice to roll, along with the points that card is worth. Players take turns rolling and assigning dice to cards, and if they complete the goal, they get the cards and the points. Thats it, roll the dice, assign to cards. The tactical decisions come from whether to go for the cards with more challenging six dice goals, or to go for simpler goals that take less dice to complete. Any dice actively assigned are dice that you are not rolling your next turn, so going big can mean not scoring many points at all if your luck doesnt work out. A cute game to kill some time with, but not my favorite dice chucker by any means.

Red Scare

And finally, in news about upcoming games, heres a strange new concept. A game about Russian spies called Red Scare where the innovative new element is a pair of special glasses that allow you to see text that other players cant. I am always intrigued by a new gameplay concept, and maybe this will put a new twist on those betrayal and hidden role games Ive written about before.

Thats all for this week. Happy gaming!

View original post here:

Evolution, rolling dice, and Russian spies - Albany Times Union (blog)

Welcome to the IoT Evolution Week in Review, my friends. This week, weve been talking about Smart Homes, Smart Agriculture, Smart City, and Smart technological improvements. Lets get into it, shall we?

In our lead story, the U.S. FCC has launched a new Web portal to allow radio spectrum researchers to apply for an experimental license for 5G spectrum projects, and the first to get one is New York University. The new application system is designed to reduce barriers to experimentation for universities, research laboratories, healthcare institutions, and manufacturers with demonstrated experience in radio frequency technology, and provide an overarching licensing program for innovative entities to rapidly acquire specific experimental licenses on an ongoing, as-needed basis in designated campus areas.

We had a great guest post from Jason Porter, VP, Security Solutions, AT&T, who wrote about how cybersecurity threats in the IoT are much bigger than any single organization. At RSA 2017 and Mobile World Congress, while technology companies were focused on delivering new solutions to help mitigate security vulnerabilities or reduce potential threats, he identified three themes resonating across both conferences.

And now, the news: At the moment, there are more than 250 smart cities projects in progress all around the world, according to recently released numbers from Navigant Research, and everyone expects that number to increase significantly over the next several years. CommScope, a global infrastructure solutions company for communications networks, has announced that it has become a Lead Partner of the Smart Cities Council with the goal of helping transform cities into Smart Cities and support the growth of digital technology and intelligent solutions.

Sensify Security, a company that delivers intelligent IoT security services at the edge to help customers find visibility, control and automation capabilities in industrial cybersecurity operations, has joined the OpenFog Consortium with the goal of helping to establish global security and privacy requirements for Fog Computing.

Its well-recognized that cellular connectivity is an extremely versatile tool in the hands of an IoT implementer. But what, exactly, can it do for a business, and how can it best be used? To answer some of those questions, Get Wireless, Sierra Wireless and IoT Evolution will jointly host a new webinar, Top 5 considerations for LTE in your business.

Farmnote Holdings, an IoT solutions provider for dairy and livestock farming, has procured a new investment of 500 million yen, or about $4,580,000, in funding from four companies: Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, the National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations, the Norinchukin Bank and Sumitomo Corporation.

Over the last few years, I have seen some major trends forming across nearly every vertical in the consumer and industrial spaces, and these trends looked like they were pointing toward a future where the IoT would indeed be improving the lives and living conditions of people all over the world, and so I decided to begin writing a book in order to look for patterns in those trends. That book, published recently, is called IoT Time: Evolving Trends in the Internet of Things. In a new weekly series, well be previewing chapters for you to read in the hopes that youll like enough to read the whole thing.

On the IoT Time Podcast, I sat down with Dave Murray, Head of Thought Leadership, BPI Network, about a study newly release by BPI that indicates that although enterprises see the value of IoT in the industrial space, the IIoT is lagging in adoption.

Theres plenty more to read, listen to and watch, so visit us on IoT Evolution World for all the IoT news, my friends. Now is the time to put into your calendar the next IoT Evolution Expo, to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Also, please get in touch with us when you have stories. As always, if you have questions, comments, complaints or compliments, please send them to me, editorial director Ken Briodagh at kbriodagh@tmcnet.com or on Twitter @KenBriodagh.

Excerpt from:

IoT Evolution World Week in Review: NYU, AT&T & More - IoT Evolution World (blog)

When Kentucky governor Matt Bevin warmed up the crowd in Louisville ahead of Donald Trumps speech in March, he seemed to share the president's taste for superlatives:

"I defy anybody in the national media, local media, anybody who is a political expert among you to find one state in America anywhere in the history of America that has more profoundly transformed itself ideologically, politically, legislatively," Bevin said, "than Kentucky in the last year of change."

That might seem like an overstatement for what is, after all, a conservative state. But Kentucky was, until recently, the rare Southern state that retained a blue Democratic hue. In November, Republicans captured the majority in the state's house of representatives for the first time in 96 years. And Bevin himself is only the third Republican governor in the last half-century. When I asked the governor about the extravagant claims in his Louisville speech, he said they were more than justified. Finally having a GOP legislature, Bevin says, "has allowed us the opportunity for policies to be heard in committees that were never heard before, such as the right to work, pro-life legislation, and charter schools."

Kentucky Republicans have wasted little time, fast-tracking bills in the first five days of this year's general assembly session. Bevin signed right-to-work legislation, repealed a prevailing-wage law that was driving up the cost of state projects, signed a paycheck-protection bill, and banned abortions after 20 weeks. The governor signed a charter school billKentucky had been one of just seven states with no competition for public education dollars. And in an effort to reduce cronyism, he eliminated 65 separate state boards and commissions.

When the regular session was over (which happens pretty quickly in Kentuckyin odd years, the general assembly has to wrap up normal business by March 30), the governor plans to call legislators back for a special session to address tax reform and pension reform.

Conservatives could only dream of such rapid action from the Trump administration and the Republican-controlled Congress. Bevin blames Congress for the pace in Washington more than Trump. "The guy has been president for just three months," the governor says. "We have had the same Congress dragging their feet for a while."

Bevin has been, in some ways, the Trump of Kentucky, a businessman without political experience who came to office to shake things upthough he's more of a doctrinaire conservative than the president. Bevin grew up in New Hampshire. He served in the Army before a career in finance. In 2008, he took over his family's bell-manufacturing company.

Bevin, today a polished political pro, entered politics in 2014 as a rabble-rousing primary challenger to Mitch McConnell and very new to the game. He accused the Senate Republican leader of being too accommodating to President Barack Obama and blasted him for voting for the bank bailout. That proved to be an amateur mistake: Politico dug up a report to investors of Veracity Funds that Bevin had signed in 2008 supporting the Troubled Assets Relief Program. McConnell had a field day with that.

Bevin learned other hard political lessons in that first campaign. There was the rally fiasco in Corbin, Kentucky: A local newspaper reported that the group he spoke to at the event advocated the legalization of cockfighting. Bevin said he thought it was a states' rights rally and later issued a statement in opposition to cockfighting. But the damage was done. In the May 2014 primary, Bevin got 35 percent of the vote against McConnell. Maybe not so bad, all things considered.

Bevin, it should be noted, describes his relationship with McConnell today as "excellent," though not chummy: "We don't hang out and have coffee."

The longshot Senate campaign wasn't for nothing. Taking on one of the nation's most powerful Republicans built both name recognition and a political base to fight another day. Bevin entered the Kentucky governor's race the next year, running against three seasoned politicians in the Republican primary. He won the 2015 primary by just 83 votes statewide. In the general election, he trailed in polls the month before Election Day, but eventually carried 106 of the state's 120 counties. "I was never an elected official or a political mover and shaker, and people said I had no chance of winning," Bevin says. "I ran on issues others were afraid to talk about."

After coming into office in December 2015, he found a conciliatory middle ground on a wedge issue by allowing marriage licenses to be issued without the signature of a county clerk. This defused the controversy involving Kim Davis, the Rowan County clerk who had been jailed for refusing to sign same-sex marriage licenses.

But it didn't take long for things to become partisan. When Bevin moved to dismantle Kynect, the state's version of Obamacare, and pushed budget cuts in other areas, he ran up against Democratic house speaker Greg Stumbo: The longtime state powerbroker obstructed much of the governor's agenda. But in 2016 Stumbo was one of the casualties as Republicans gained control of the Kentucky house, with the GOP going from just 46 of 100 seats to 64.

With a Republican legislature to work with, Bevin now has a 50 percent approval ratingnot great, but a big upswing from his 33 percent approval this time a year ago, when he was fighting with Democrats.

Does Bevin represent a new political balance of power in Kentucky, or is he just another GOP aberration there? The last Republican governor, Ernie Fletcher, was a one-termer. He was a creature of the political establishment, having served in the state legislature, then the U.S. House, before being backed for governor in 2003 by McConnell. Once Fletcher was in office, Democratic attacks paralyzed him. By contrast, Bevin is anything but paralyzed.

McConnell is rightly credited with making Kentucky a two-party system, leading to GOP dominance at the congressional level. But Bevin deserves much credit for the change at the state office level. He also demonstrates how an anti-establishment rabble-rouser can evolve into a successful politician, a lesson that could be valuable for Donald Trump.

"If anti-establishment means cutting red tape and ignoring the hot air, I'm anti-establishment. But, if the establishment includes people working hard for the good of the public, I'll work with anyone who has good ideas, Democrat or Republican," Bevin says. "I try to create dialogue and avoid the noisemakers. I don't watch TV. I don't sit down with editorial boards who are never going to support me. I go out and listen to people."

Fred Lucas is White House correspondent for the Daily Signal and author of Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections (Stairway Press, 2016).

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Gov. Bevin already called a special legislative session. He has not, but sources in the Governor's office say he plans to.

Here is the original post:

The Evolution of Matt Bevin - The Weekly Standard