Michael Strickland - MichaelStrickland's Blog

Michael Strickland - MichaelStrickland's Blog - TheJHub.com http://www.thejhub.com/home/Blog/MichaelStrickland Adventure along with an iconoclast Adventure along with an iconoclast en-us No worries for Idaho State University http://www.thejhub.com/home/Blog/MichaelStrickland/735 http://www.thejhub.com/home/Blog/MichaelStrickland/735 Idaho State University has gotten through adversity in the past, and it will survive this current economic crisis. I wish President Arthur Vailas and all faculty, staff and students the best as they weather the storm. <div id="detailstory">From today's Idaho State Journal</div> <div>By Jimmy Hancock</div> POCATELLO -- Scott Hughes said Saturday that he "grossly erred" when writing an e-mail sent last week to fellow members of the College of Arts and Sciences in which he included the statement that "layoffs will be inevitable" at Idaho State University. "I should never have said that," Hughes said. "Layoffs are not even on the radar screen. I am sending out a memo next week retracting it. I don't want people to get the wrong idea." <div id="detailstory">Hughes, interim dean of ISU's College of Arts and Sciences, said the e-mail sent out last week, addressed to part-time adjuncts and full-time lecturers, was meant to address the recent news that ISU may have to make additional cuts to its 2009 fiscal budget. In September, Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter enacted a 1 percent holdback of funds to state agencies and university's, which amounted to a $744,000 cut to ISU's budget. Otter said last week that another 1.5 percent holdback may be needed, which would trim ISU's budget by an additional $1.1 million.</div> <div id="detailstory">Hughes said he was hoping to address concerns that even more holdbacks may be looming as rumored, and that could effect the department as a whole and specifically part-time adjuncts. "The whole point here is that we have to address the holdback scenario," Hughes said. "What I was trying to tell them is that some will not be rehired but some of them will be." </div> <div id="detailstory">Adjuncts are used when additional classes need to be offered and no full-time professors are available to teach them. Because of increasing economic difficulties, Hughes said its possible fewer adjuncts, who are hired on a semester-by-semester bases, will be used in the future. </div> <div id="detailstory">Hughes said he personally foresees the possibility that some full-time lecturers who don't have lengthy service time at ISU, could be affected if additional, significant holdbacks occur. But he reiterated that ISU administrators have said nothing about layoffs. "We have to evaluate these thing carefully," he said. "It's not even my call to make and it's certainly not the position of the university. I take full responsibility for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time." </div> <div id="detailstory">Kent Tingey, ISU's vice president for university advancement, said layoffs aren't even being spoken of at the university. "I haven't heard any conversations about layoffs, just increased scrutiny," he said. "Certainly, if we go into deeper cuts, that is going to spell some challenges.</div> <div id="detailstory">The increased scrutiny the university has implemented pertains to position that naturally come open at the university. Tingey said during any given month roughly 70 positions will be vacant. "What we are doing now is scrutinizing the need for each open position before filling it," he said. "It doesn't mean it won't be fill and it doesn't mean it will be eliminated. It just means that whether it needs to be filled will be more heavily evaluated."</div> <div id="detailstory"></div> <div id="detailstory"></div> <div id="detailstory"></div> Following This Historic Election, Discover One of the Civil Rights Movement's Unsung Heroes http://www.thejhub.com/home/Blog/MichaelStrickland/733 http://www.thejhub.com/home/Blog/MichaelStrickland/733 In the wake of the historic election of our first African-American president, there is cause to look back and appreciate the unacknowledged heroes on whose shoulders this victory, in part, rests. One such individual is Claudette Colvin, who is the subject of National Book-Award finalist Phillip Hoose’s forthcoming nonfiction title <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&keywords=Montgomery%20Alabama&tag=michaelrstric-20&index=books&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325">CLAUDETTE COLVIN: TWICE TOWARD JUSTICE </a>(Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Melanie Kroupa Books / February 2, 2009). <o:p></o:p> <o:p></o:p> The book reveals the true story of Ms. Colvin, who, as a fifteen-year old in 1955 <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&keywords=Montgomery%20Alabama&tag=michaelrstric-20&index=books&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325">Montgomery, Alabama</a></st1:city></st1:place> refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus to a white woman, nine months before Rosa Parks took a similar stand. Ms. Colvin then went on to challenge segregation a second time, as a key plaintiff in the landmark case of Browder v. Gayle, which struck down the bus segregation laws in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Montgomery</st1:city></st1:place>.<o:p> </o:p> The Montgomery Advertiser notes, “Barack Obama expressed an opinion eloquently . . . when he said . . .  ‘It’s a long time coming, but because of what we did on this day, at this defining moment, change has come to <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">America</st1:country-region></st1:place>.’ Actually, that change started long, long ago. The roots . . . can be found in many places, but none more so than this community, which can legitimately claim to be one of the premier birthplaces of the modern Civil Rights Movement. Without the work and sacrifices of people like Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, E.D. Nixon, Fred Gray, [and] Claudette Colvin . . . what happened at the polls Tuesday could never have occurred.”<o:p></o:p> Babies and Beethoven: Infants can tell happy songs from sad, BYU study shows http://www.thejhub.com/home/Blog/MichaelStrickland/732 http://www.thejhub.com/home/Blog/MichaelStrickland/732 <h3 class="post-title entry-title"><a href="http://123childrensbooks.blogspot.com/2008/11/babies-and-beethoven-infants-can-tell.html">Babies and Beethoven: Infants can tell happy songs from sad, BYU study shows</a> </h3> <div class="post-header-line-1"></div> <div class="post-body entry-content"><a href="http://news.byu.edu/releases/archive08/Oct/babymusic/0810-41%2053.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 120px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 180px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://news.byu.edu/releases/archive08/Oct/babymusic/0810-41%2053.jpg" border="0" /></a> <div><a href="http://news.byu.edu/releases/archive08/Oct/babymusic/0810-41%2010.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 120px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 180px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://news.byu.edu/releases/archive08/Oct/babymusic/0810-41%2010.jpg" border="0" /></a> <div><a href="http://news.byu.edu/releases/archive08/Oct/jump-babymusic-washingtonpost.html" target="_blank">Read more from the Washington Post</a> <a href="http://news.byu.edu/releases/archive08/Oct/jump-babymusic-usnews.html" target="_blank">Read more from U.S. News & World Report</a> <a href="http://news.byu.edu/releases/archive08/Oct/jump-babymusic-timesonline.html" target="_blank">Read more from the Times of London</a> <a href="http://news.byu.edu/releases/archive08/Oct/jump-babymusic-deseretnews.html" target="_blank">Read more from the Deseret News</a> <a href="http://news.byu.edu/releases/archive08/Oct/jump-babymusic-sltrib.html" target="_blank">Read more from the Salt Lake Tribune</a> <a href="http://news.byu.edu/releases/archive08/Oct/jump-babymusic-telegraph.html" target="_blank">Read more from The Daily Telegraph</a> <a href="http://news.byu.edu/releases/archive08/Oct/jump-babymusic-heraldextra.html" target="_blank">Read more from the Provo Daily Herald</a> A new Brigham Young University study shows that 5-month-old babies can distinguish an upbeat tune, such as “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, from a lineup of gloomier compositions. By age 9 months, babies can do the opposite and pick out the sorrowful sound of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony from a pack of happy pieces. The musical experiments offer another example of how babies make sense of the world long before they can talk, says BYU psychology professor and study author Ross Flom. “One of the first things babies understand communicatively is emotion, so for them the melody is the message,” Flom said. “Our study showed that by nine months, babies are categorizing songs as happy or sad the same way that preschoolers and adults do.” The results of the musical study will be published in the upcoming issue of the academic journal Infant Behavior and Development. Given the challenge of peering inside babies’ minds, the researchers designed experiments that take advantage of what babies say with their eyes. First they displayed an emotionally-neutral face for the baby while music played. When the baby looked away from the face, the music stopped and the researchers queued up a new song from a playlist of five happy and five sad songs. For each song, observers recorded how long the baby paid attention to the face. The babies that noticed a switch from happy to sad, or vice versa, stared at the face three to four seconds longer than usual because of their heightened interest. This method of measuring how long it takes for babies to get bored is the same principle behind <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/science/29observ.html?_r=2&n=Top/News/Science/Topics/Birds&oref=slogin&oref=slogin" target="_blank">a 2007 study</a> published in the journal Science that shows 4- and 6-month-old babies from English-only households can tell different languages are being spoken simply by watching and not hearing the person speaking. “People of all ages reveal quite a bit through what they choose to look at and how much time they spend attending to that event,” Flom said. “The only trick is to come up with the right presentation to test an idea about how and what babies learn.” The researchers selected songs with the greatest consensus as happy or sad based on ratings by average adults and children. BYU music professor Susan Kenney, who was not involved with the study, noted some of the technical differences between the happy and sad songs the babies heard. “The happy songs were all in major keys with fairly short phrases or motives that repeated,” Kenney said. “The tempo and melodic rhythms were faster than any of the sad selections, and the melodies had a general upward direction. Four of the sad songs were in minor keys and all had a slower beat and long melodic rhythms. For an infant to notice those differences is fascinating.” Flom says this period of learning about emotion in sounds is a natural step before learning to talk. “Infants master so many things in such a short time frame,” Flom said. “I can’t think of a better line of inquiry than how infants learn so much so quickly.” Douglas Gentile of Iowa State University and Anne Pick of the University of Minnesota are co-authors on the study.</div> </div> <div style="CLEAR: both"></div> </div> Pocatello will have a very special visitor on Monday, November 17th http://www.thejhub.com/home/Blog/MichaelStrickland/731 http://www.thejhub.com/home/Blog/MichaelStrickland/731 <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Pocatello</st1:place></st1:city> will have a very special visitor on Monday, November 17th.  Donovan Rypkema will be spending the day in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Pocatello</st1:city></st1:place>.  Donovan is a nationally recognized expert on downtown preservation, revitalization and its associated economic benefits.  <o:p></o:p> Stephanie Palagi, executive director of Old Town Pocatello Inc., and her team have put together an entire day full of meetings and opportunities to meet and listen to him.   Donovan is not only full of information, he is also very entertaining.<o:p></o:p> <o:p></o:p> They would like to extend an invitation to all <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Old</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Town</st1:placetype></st1:place> merchants, property owners, and friends to take advantage of this opportunity.  Mayor Chase and the City of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Pocatello Historic Preservation Commission</st1:place></st1:city> are hosting the meetings.  This means there is no cost for you to attend. You are welcome at any of the meetings, including the 8:00am meeting and walking tour. Stephanie hopes you can join them to learn more about historic preservation, downtown economic development and what they truly mean to our community. For more information, contact Stephanie Palagi: <o:p></o:p> Office 208.232.7545<o:p></o:p> Cell 208.241.1565<o:p></o:p> For a complete list of upcoming events visit <a target="_blank" href="http://michaelrstrickland.com/openwebmail/cgi-bin/www.oldtownpocatello.com%20">www.oldtownpocatello.com</a> <o:p></o:p> I Just Voted http://www.thejhub.com/home/Blog/MichaelStrickland/724 http://www.thejhub.com/home/Blog/MichaelStrickland/724 ... according to the dictates of my conscience. All Americans should take part in this sacred right and responsibility that so many have given their very lives to defend. It will be very interesting to see the results of this historic election, tonight. Freedom is not free. Obama Backers Gleeful While McCain's are Glum http://www.thejhub.com/home/Blog/MichaelStrickland/721 http://www.thejhub.com/home/Blog/MichaelStrickland/721 That smiling guy walking down the street? Odds are he's a Barack Obama backer. The grouchy looking one? Don't ask, and don't necessarily count on him to vote on Tuesday, either, according to political beat writers Alan Fram and Trevor Thompson. More John McCain supporters feel glum about the presidential campaign while more of Obama's are charged up over it, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo! News poll released Saturday. The survey shows McCain backers have become increasingly upset in recent weeks, a period that has seen Obama take a firm lead in many polls. One expert says the contrasting moods could affect how likely the two candidates' supporters are to vote on Election Day, possibly dampening McCain's turnout while boosting Obama's. While 43 percent of the Democrat Obama's backers said they are excited over the campaign, just 13 percent of McCain's said so, according to the survey of adults, conducted by Knowledge Networks. Six in 10 Obama supporters said the race interests them, compared to four in 10 backing McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona. On the flip side, 52 percent of McCain supporters said the campaign has left them frustrated, compared to 30 percent of Obama's. A quarter of McCain backers say they feel helpless, double the rate of those preferring Obama, the Illinois senator. All of this is a bad sign for McCain, according to George E. Marcus, a political scientist from Williams College who has studied the role emotion plays in politics. Negative feelings about a campaign can discourage voters by making them less likely to go through what can be a painful process: Voting for someone who will lose. "If I'm getting my head handed to me by a tennis player, my brain is saying, 'Do I want a second match? No,'" Marcus said. "Why do something that's going to lead to failure?" <li><a href="http://us.lrd.yahoo.com/_ylt=At.CvdE.PN8JqOGh0swbF1bNUpF4/SIG=12ierhvjm/**http%3A//l.yimg.com/a/i/us/nws/elections/ap_election_wave9_topline_102708v2.pdf">Full poll results (PDF)</a> </li> <li><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/page/election-2008-political-pulse-methodology;_ylt=Anz95P9YDvLJJAI9p1UEEz7NUpF4">Poll methodology</a> </li> BYU statistician simulates “If the election were held today” http://www.thejhub.com/home/Blog/MichaelStrickland/720 http://www.thejhub.com/home/Blog/MichaelStrickland/720 Analysis: Obama and Southern Senate candidates' fates tied A new method of simulating elections shows that if the election were held today, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama would beat Republican John McCain 375 to 163 in the Electoral College, and Senate Democrats could come away with 59 seats. Emphasis on “if the election were held today,” says Brigham Young University statistician William Christensen, who notes that not quite a month ago the simulations indicated a tie in the Electoral College was <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/how-likely-is-an-electoral-college-tie-419/" target="_blank">a credible scenario</a>. Christensen and BYU student Alan Vaughn run 50,000 simulations daily based on state-by-state polling and <a href="http://statistics.byu.edu/faculty/wfc/2008Election/" target="_blank">post the results online</a>. The academic journal The American Statistician <a href="http://statistics.byu.edu/faculty/wfc/2008Election/ChristensenFlorenceTAS2008.pdf" target="_blank">recently published</a> the BYU team’s method of simulating election outcomes. “This approach is on solid scientific footing and provides a really interesting picture of how the probabilities of winning in each state add up,” said Peter Westfall, a statistician at Texas Tech University and editor of the journal, a publication of the American Statistical Association. Westfall was not involved with developing the simulation method. Currently the state most up for grabs is North Carolina, which appears a toss-up. To do the simulations, the researchers flip 50 virtual weighted coins – one for each state – 50,000 times. Each figurative coin reflects the odds of that state going for McCain or Obama according to that state’s combined poll results. The more recent the poll, the more influential it is in the simulation. “This helps cut through the news chatter about national polls and directly states the candidates’ odds of winning,” Christensen said. “Along the way, the students in my class have fun getting their hands dirty using statistics on a topic they’re already interested in.” One observation Christensen and his students make is the strong connection between Obama and Senate Democratic candidates in the South. The Senate contests in Georgia, North Carolina and Kentucky see the highest correlation between how Obama and the Democratic candidate fare in state-level polling, suggesting that they are riding the same wave. Republicans currently hold all four of those seats. To follow the daily simulations as the election progresses, visit this web page: <a href="http://statistics.byu.edu/faculty/wfc/2008Election/" target="_blank">http://statistics.byu.edu/faculty/wfc/2008Election/</a> Barack Obama is gunning for a national landslide http://www.thejhub.com/home/Blog/MichaelStrickland/719 http://www.thejhub.com/home/Blog/MichaelStrickland/719 <div class="post-body entry-content"> Barack Obama is gunning for a national landslide. He now leads in four states won by President Bush in 2004 and is essentially tied with John McCain in two other Republican red states, according to new AP-GfK battleground polling. <div style="CLEAR: both">Times sure have changed.</div> </div> A Video Letter to Barack Hussein Obama http://www.thejhub.com/home/Blog/MichaelStrickland/714 http://www.thejhub.com/home/Blog/MichaelStrickland/714 <h3 class="title"><a class="active" href="http://www.43rdstateblues.com/?q=node/5525#comment-4233">Parents come to them every day ...</a> </h3> <div class="submitted">writes a blogger on <a class="l" onmousedown="return clk(this.href,'','','res','1','')" href="http://www.43rdstateblues.com/">43rd State Blues: Democracy for Idaho</a>. </div> <div class="submitted"></div> <div class="submitted">"The parents have no where else to go with their troubled kids, says one inner city community activist in this video. Sadly, he goes on to explain that the police department says that there is nothing they can do for the child until he or she commits a crime. Jesse Jackson first brought this topic to national attention, along with the idea of removing Obama's testicles. Jesse's indiscrete delivery may have made a joke out of, and essentially buried a dilaogue that should be seriously discussed: Is Obama talking about the issues that are important to most blacks?"</div> <div class="submitted"></div> <div class="submitted"></div> <div class="submitted"></div> <div class="submitted">Watch: </div> <div class="submitted"><a href="http://www.43rdstateblues.com/?q=node/5525">Is Obama talking about the issues that are important to most blacks?</a></div> <div class="submitted"></div> The McCain Palin Train Wreck of a Week http://www.thejhub.com/home/Blog/MichaelStrickland/710 http://www.thejhub.com/home/Blog/MichaelStrickland/710 <div class="content"> Start the week when the former Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces and Republican Secretary of State Collin Powell endorses Obama. Then the RNC gets caught spending $150,000 at Nieman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue instead of Cabellas for its small town Caribou Barbie. Oooh and <a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/pains-makeup-stylist-fetches-highest-salary-in-2-week-period/?hp" target="_blank">$30,000</a> for hair and makeup. McCain's brother <a href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_10/015350.php" target="_blank">calls 911 </a> to kvetch about getting stuck in a traffic jam and then bitches out the officer when she explains its not an emergency. One of McCain's volunteers and proud Young Republican incites a <a href="http://foxforum.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/10/23/jmoody_1023/" target="_blank">charge of race baiting</a> by falsely claiming an Obama supporter carved a B into her face in a politically motivated attack. McCain's campaign feeds the story before the hoax is discovered. As a result even Fox News says your campaign is over. What else could possibly go wrong? <a href="http://www.43rdstateblues.com/?q=node/5514">Read the full text of </a><a href="http://www.43rdstateblues.com/?q=node/5514">The McCain Palin Trainwreck of a Week by political blogger Sisyphus </a> </div>