Tag Archives: USA

Students Cleanup Their ‘Hood

Students at Spain Middle School, which is nowhere near Spain, in fact the school is in Detroit Michigan. Detroit is renowned for it’s urban areas that are falling apart, well these kids had enough. For a school project they utilized technologies used by NASA and marketing corporations, GIS – also known as Geographic Information Systems.

They went around their neighborhoods documenting all things wrong. They plotted the location of say an abandoned car and took a picture of it and went on to the next sign of urban blight. After collecting all their data they took the next logical step.

“They students have compiled their material into Power Point presentations for Detroit city council members, highlighting areas that have been neglected and need improvement. They were able to show, for example, that the number of abandoned homes in one neighborhood had increased by more than 50 percent. The Wayne County prosecutors’ office began targeting the area.”

With GIS technology becoming more accessible hopefully we can see it used for more projects like this and maybe for tracking environmental damage too.

Organic Farming Degree Offered

Washington State University has started accepting students for their organic farming degree program. This is a first in the USA, sure two other universities offer courses in organic farming, Colorado State and Michigan State, but offering a degree is new.

“WSU has high hopes for its new organic-agriculture major, both to attract new students and meet a growing demand for experts in organic farming. In the new Organic Agriculture Systems major, students will study subjects like weed science and entomology, work on the organic farm and can specialize further in areas such as organic farm economics.

The major, announced last month, drew a handful of students immediately; a university study predicts the program eventually will have about 40 people enrolled at any one time.”

Gitmo Gives in to Geneva

There are some news items that I debate about posting, this is one of them. The good news is that Washington has finally said they are going to treat the detainees at Guantánamo Bay as humans and treat them in accordance of the Geneva Convention.

The reason I’m hesitant posting that this is good news is because people should never have been treated like this in the first place. For a developed nation that purports to spread freedom to treat people this way is just wrong. Overall though it is good that they will now treat detainees well.

“The US today reversed policy when it said all detainees at Guantánamo Bay and all other prisoners in US military custody were entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions.
The Bush administration had previously claimed terrorism suspects were “non-combatants” because they were fighting for a sect or faction and not a state and were therefore not subject to the Geneva conventions.”

Of course, this has something to with Gitmo a No-Go With Supreme Court-o

Star Wars Reanalyzed

The Union of Concerned Scientists have done it again with a simple, yet effective video clip detailing the problems with missile defence. See article here.

In a world where tensions among nations seem to be increasing it is important for people to realize the false realities of perceived security systems. Arguably it is better to spend all the R&D money spent on star wars to be spent on meaningful science that promotes peace, not war.