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A Modest Proposal: Bachelor’s Degrees from Community Colleges
Last week, The California Report discussed Assemblyman Marty Block’s proposal to allow community colleges to award four-year bachelor’s degrees. Listen to the report below:
Should Abstinence Education Be Part of Health Care Reform?
The national dialogue on health care incorporates many issues that have long divided our country: abortion, immigration, end-of-life care, and now it seems that sex education has joined the list.
The Washington Post reported yesterday that Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) sponsored and successfully included legislation that designates $50 million for abstinence education programs in the Senate version of the health care overhaul bill.
The reform bill passed by the House of Representatives in Nov. doesn’t specifcy any funding for abstinance education but does include $50 million for comprehensive sex education programs, which often include discussions of so-called “safer sex” techniques such as using condoms. The Senate bill also includes $75 million for comprehensive sex education programs.
Sex education funding will probably be only a minor part of the discussions to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the health care bill.
To learn more about the funding of abstinence programs, read the full article at The Washington Post.
And if you need to refresh your memory of how a bill becomes a law, nothing beats School House Rock’s classic “I’m Just a Bill.” Check out the video on YouTube.
To learn more about health care reform visit:
COP 15: What Just Happened?
By Molly Samuel
Christmas is looming, New Years’ plans are starting to take shape, and the best song, movie, and book of the decade lists are too numerous to count. Not to mention the fact that the Senate seems to be on its way to passing its version of the health care bill. It all makes the climate talks in Copenhagen seem like they happened so long ago. But the talks went on into weekend. World leaders stayed up all night Friday night trying to reach an agreement, and everyone else is still trying to sort out what it all means.
The hope was that the climate conference in Copenhagen would result in a legally binding agreement on the global response to climate change. That didn’t happen. There’s no legally binding agreement. President Obama worked with other world leaders to create a document, now being called the Copenhagen Accord, and other countries, officially, will “take note” of it. There are some good things in the document: developed nations will give $100 billion dollars to poor nations to help them weather the effects of climate change. Countries will work together to try to keep the world from warming more than two degrees Celsius. Money will go to countries that have historically profited from deforestation to help them preserve their forests. Countries will monitor their emissions.
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Word of the Week: Copenhagen
KQED’s staff and interns return this week to break down another buzz word. This week’s choice was a natural: Copenhagen. Watch the video below to find out what the fuss is all about.
And we aren’t the only ones trying to explain what the heck is happening over there. It looks like Copenhagen, or more specifically COP 15, have been the topics of many explainers the past few weeks. Explainers are what we call features that break down a complex topic in an easy-to-understand and hopefully, entertaining, way. Here are a few we thought worthy of sharing: first, check out the New York Time’s Copenhagen 101 video and Time Magazine’s nice little animated number below:
We also liked the humor that online environmental magazine Grist brought to its coverage and its 15 People to Watch in Copenhagen slide show.
And a final nod to NPR’s Planet Money for the most appropriate use of Nelly’s “Hot in Herre.”
Tell us, where do you get information on topics you want to learn more about? Do you prefer text, video, or podcasts? And should we keep trying to be funny or just stick to what we do best?
Do you sext?
According to a study released today by The Pew Internet and American Life Project 4% of teens ages 12-17 who own cell phones say they have “sexted” or sent sexually suggestive photos or videos of themselves to someone else. 15% say they have received such images of someone they know. Tell us, is sexting cause for concern or does the older generation just not get it? Are you suprised by the study’s findings? Leave your opinion in the comments section.
Please note: At the beginning of the show, host Michael Krasny checks in briefly with Rob Schmitz, KQED’s Los Angeles bureau chief currently covering the climate summit in Copenhagen.
Another Look at San Francisco Panorama
By Linnaea Weld
When I think of preservation of the news media in written form, 300 plus gigantic pages of stories which seem (from what I have read so far) to be mainly in first person, is not the first thing that comes to mind. But never the less, San Francisco Panorama still appeals to this teenager who wakes up every morning and reads the paper.
The overall artsy style of San Francisco Panorama appealed to me. Articles about independent radio stations, two art sections, and handwritten reviews with foreign guitarists are all things that swayed me to pay sixteen dollars for a pound of paper. Other than the prominence of first person writing, the few problems I found were that some articles were simply too long, and after a week, I am still having trouble navigating my way through the paper. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, there is an article about how to make the perfect bowl of ramen, but so far the most interesting thing I’ve found is a story about someone’s personal witch, Dori Midnight.
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Students Fight For Human Rights at COP15
By Molly Samuel
While hundreds of protesters were arrested in Copenhagen last weekend, thousands of other people representing countries, research institutions, businesses, and non-government organizations (NGOs) went on talking and negotiating at the
United Nations climate conference. Delegates to the fifteenth Conference of Parties, or COP15 (it’s not an abbreviation for Copenhagen even though it looks like it could be) are trying to work out an international agreement on reducing and adapting to climate change. Balance is tough to find: many nations have not been able to meet the goals they signed on for with the Kyoto Protocol, which was the previous treaty signed in 1997.
So the negotiators are inside negotiating and the protesters are outside protesting, and there’s a lot of room in between for everyone else to get together and talk about tech innovations, new scientific findings, human rights, animal life, and just about anything else you can imagine. There are side events, kiosks, tents, panels, discussions, debates, and press conferences. And in the midst of Nobel laureates and seasoned professionals, there are young people presenting their views and their research.
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Does Uganda’s Anti-Gay Bill Have American Roots?
By Emmanuel Hapsis
Editor’s note: Updated on 12/15/09
Something important is happening in Uganda, but unless you watch The Rachel Maddow Show, you probably haven’t heard much about it. There is a proposed bill (officially called “The Anti-Homosexuality Bill”) in the Uganda parliament that proposes to execute people for having homosexual sex and for being gay and HIV positive. Recently, news outlets reported that Ugandan officials had bowed to international pressure and had removed execution and life-imprisonment from the bill, but David Bahati, a major proponent of the bill, recently denied those reports. The bill is severe with or without the death penalty: it calls for a three year jail penalty for anyone who fails to turn in someone they know to be gay, a seven year sentence for “attempting to commit the offense of homosexuality,” forced “conversion therapy,” and the extradition of any Ugandan who is living abroad and suspected of being gay.
So where did the Ugandan legislators get the idea for this bill? According to Maddow and Time magazine, the work of prominent American evangelicals such as Rick Warren and books such as The Pink Swastika and Coming Out Straight have been used to justify the Ugandan legislation. Below is Maddow’s interview with Richard Cohen, author of Coming Out Straight.
It is important to note that Rick Warren, Pink Swastika author Scott Lively, and several members of the group “The Family,” to which Maddow refers, all recently released statements to the American media denouncing the Ugandan bill.
Further Coverage of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill:
Uganda’s Anti-Gay Bill: Inspired by the U.S. at Time Magazine
White House Condemns Uganda Bill at the Advocate.com
A commentary by Log Cabin Republicans spokesman Charles T. Moran at NPR.org
A Youth Take on San Francisco Panorama
By Eric Gneckow
If you have ever tried to fit your Volkswagen into the refrigerator, then you know what it is like to carry home a copy of San Francisco Panorama. Many newborns weigh less than this newspaper, and finding a space for it in my backpack made me want to trade my journalism degree for an engineering one.
In fact, the act of portaging a newspaper has become decreasingly common for me since graduating this May. Amid the disordered and time-consuming lifestyle change from scholastic newsman to 23-year-old retail stooge, I visit my bank’s website more frequently than I peruse SF Gate.
Yet here was this nuclear bomb of a thing, San Francisco Panorama, the latest edition of Dave Eggers’ quarterly journal McSweeney’s. . . with two magazines spilling out of it and a wingspan to match its epic heaviness. But my awe quickly resolved into an urge to protect it. I would soon learn about its massive mix of graphics, investigative features and subtle humor, but right now I only knew that it was something very special. Only on the safe real estate of my living room floor would it again see the light of day.
What I uncovered after peeling back the first enormous page was a love story for knowledge and a call to arms for those who want to know. San Francisco Panorama is a celebration of news that plays out like a choose-your-own adventure, each path rich with the merits of print. It is the punch line to a long joke that reveals the reality of our modern media landscape: that podcasts, Twitter and YouTube are, as far as most news is concerned, profoundly annoying. Long live print.
“This,” I thought before pausing at a two-page color spread depicting the electromagnetic interactions of the Earth and Sun, “is the dangerous, heroic thing that can move a nation. This. . . is news!”
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KQED Arts: 5 Reasons to Love Lady GaGa
By Emmanuel Hapsis
Now, I know that you’re skeptical, but trust me on this one: Lady Gaga is not just another vacuous fembot on her way to a life of sex tapes and publicity stunts; she’s of a different breed. Here are five reasons why Lady Gaga is cooler than you think she is:
1. For starters, she actually sings, plays the piano, and writes her own music. And she ain’t no dummy either. She was admitted to Juilliard at 11 and gained early admission at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where she studied art, music, and religion. And she’s smart enough to take control of her image: “My album covers are not sexual at all, which was an issue at my record label. I fought for months. They didn’t think the photos were commercial enough. The last thing a young woman needs is another picture of a sexy pop star writhing in sand, covered in grease, touching herself.”
2. While most pop starlets wouldn’t know how to spell avant-garde, let alone its meaning, Lady Gaga has her way with the concept, especially with her cutting-edge Grace Jones-esque fashion statements. Not to mention her unorthodox performances. During a recent awards show, the audience watched a blood-soaked Gaga die on stage:
Read more reasons to like Lady GaGa and The Fame Monster review at KQED Arts.
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