"Teachers At California High School Refuse To Act When Founder Of A Conservative Club Is Threatened And Harassed By Other Students -- One Teacher Called Tim A Nazi, While Another Described The Club As "A Bunch Of Bigots.""

Grok Headline matches for "Teachers At California High School Refuse To Act When Founder Of A Conservative Club Is Threatened And Harassed By Other Students -- One Teacher Called Tim A Nazi, While Another Described The Club As "A Bunch Of Bigots.""

a bunch of guys at a private club taking
pot shots at cage-reared ducks

a bunch of guys at a private club taking
pot shots at cage-reared ducks 12/11/2003 06:11 AM
Cheney and gang shoot 417 out of 500 pen-reared pheasants .. even the Vice President's getting some of that action! .. desta notcia

thepittsburghchannel.com/news/2693558/detail.html
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The Club For Growth - The Club for
Growth Blog: DNC 'Lawyers Up' Against
the Club for Growth

The Club For Growth - The Club for
Growth Blog: DNC 'Lawyers Up' Against
the Club for Growth 08/06/2004 02:31 AM
DNC Lawyers Also Try To Stop Anti-Kerry Ads By The 'Club For Growth' From Being Played .. independent ads from this other group .. making a habit .. life

clubforgrowth.org/blog/archives/013644.php
track this site | 4 links

a judge and lawmakers are being
threatened and harassed by nuts from the
Springs

a judge and lawmakers are being
threatened and harassed by nuts from the
Springs 06/11/2004 05:02 AM

tinyurl.com/2d98d
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Pennsylvania and Microsoft Announce
Joint Effort to Enhance Teacher
Resources and High-School Reform

Pennsylvania and Microsoft Announce
Joint Effort to Enhance Teacher
Resources and High-School Reform 04/06/2005 03:29 PM
Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell and Microsoft Corp. today announced a four-year memorandum of understanding (MOU) to support and expand teachers' professional development and high-school reform. The joint effort will contribute to Pennsylvania's Keystone Program for teachers and Project 720, the commonwealth's high-school reform initiative.

Students Investigate Laptops For High
School

Students Investigate Laptops For High
School 02/12/2004 11:29 AM
A group of Mt. Abram students is dedicated to improving their school through taking advantage of the benefits provided by laptop computers. By Barry Matulaitis (Irregular via MyAppleMenu)

Mobile Learning Attracts High School
Students

Mobile Learning Attracts High School
Students 09/17/2004 08:21 AM
Hankooki Sep 17 2004 12:56PM GMT

High school students charged with
hacking into psychologist's computer

High school students charged with
hacking into psychologist's computer 06/30/2004 03:13 AM
AP via Newsday Jun 30 2004 7:52AM GMT

Bush Touts Plan to Help High School
Students (Reuters)

Bush Touts Plan to Help High School
Students (Reuters) 08/21/2004 09:20 AM
Reuters - President Bush on Saturday touted his plan to boost aid for high school students amid criticism from his Democratic opponent who said he has undercut efforts to fix failing schools.

If A High School Fears Blogging, What
Lesson Is It Teaching Students?

If A High School Fears Blogging, What
Lesson Is It Teaching Students? 03/30/2005 06:50 AM
Isn't it great that our high schools are teaching students to fear new things? It's nothing new, of course. When I was in high school, there was a minor controversy over the fact that Walkmans were banned from the school. The principal declared that it was the biggest threat facing our education -- despite the very real drug problem and disturbing weapons problem (this was before metal detectors were common on school grounds) students faced. So, the talk last week about sc hools banning iPods didn't seem all that new. It's just the same thing, updated for a new technology. Ignore the real problem (drugs and weapons are still making their way into schools) and focus on something that's easy to spot: white headphones. However, sometimes this fear of the "new" goes to bizarre extremes. While it's not quite as bad as the various headlines and coverage suggest, there is a school in New Jersey that seems to fear blogging. The headline claims that the school has "banned blogging," but it's really just blocking a particular blogging site (not named). The problem is the reasoning: "blogging is not an educational use of school computers." While the importance of "blogging" specifically is overhyped, teaching students how to better use technology to communicate is an important skill -- and one that blogging does provide. The fact that a blogging site is banned from the school won't stop the kids from blogging -- but it does make the whole activity that much more enticing for them, without any supervision. If the school were smart, it would be encouraging blogging, while teaching kids to understand both the risks and the benefits of communicating online. Instead, the lesson the kids are learning is that pretending something doesn't exist or isn't "educational" is the proper way to react to something you don't understand.

Four Sydney high school students charged
with global Internet scam, police say?

Four Sydney high school students charged
with global Internet scam, police say? 01/07/2005 12:16 AM
China Post Jan 7 2005 3:25AM GMT

Prominent Conservative Activist Defends
Nazi Analogies

Prominent Conservative Activist Defends
Nazi Analogies 01/24/2004 06:10 PM
Grover Norquist, one of the right-wing's most important activists, still insists it's Nazi-like to favor an inheritance tax. And I'm still waiting for alleged conservatives to condemn his statements. What hypocrites.

Fan-soundtrack for Sound of Music called
"Rolf is a Nazi"

Fan-soundtrack for Sound of Music called
"Rolf is a Nazi" 03/27/2005 05:15 AM
Cory Doctorow: A bunch of musicians who know each other from the Songfight site (think of it as photoshopping contests for musicians) have collaborated on an album of Sound of Music covers called "Rolf is a Nazi." Lots of good stuff, but the standouts here are definitely D o Re Mi and Climb Every Mountain. Link (Thanks, Fluffy!)

New Teachers, Computers For Students

New Teachers, Computers For Students 08/31/2004 07:09 PM
Washington Times Aug 31 2004 10:28PM GMT

There's a club if you'd like to go

There's a club if you'd like to go 02/14/2004 02:28 AM
The photo inside The Smiths' The Queen is Dead album depicts the boys in front of the Salford Lads Club in Manchester, England. Ever since the record was released in 1986, the building has become a mecca for Smiths fans--a notoriously, er, dedicated bunch. At first, the Club was less than thrilled at being associated with the kinds of characters who would sing about "stealing lead from a church roof." Now though, the charity is dedicating an entire room to those charming men who made their gateway famous. Link (Thanks, Chris!)

CD Club ... first get-together

CD Club ... first get-together 04/09/2004 03:59 PM
Had a fantastic first meeting of our little music club last night at St. James Gate. Unfortunately, Greg was a no-show: too embarrassed to appear without CDs after losing a wrestling match with technology (I've promised to help get him back on his feet). Mark showed no such reluctance or guilt, appearing like one of his students talking of canines and homework. Both have been assured they're still welcome and both promise gifts of music to come shortly.Three great hours sipping beers and talking music. The group seems to be the perfect mix: strongly shared tastes, sensibilities and knowledge but...

Students Charged for Taping Teacher (AP)

Students Charged for Taping Teacher (AP) 05/19/2004 09:08 AM
AP - Five high school seniors in Missouri have been charged with assault for allegedly trying to tape a teacher to a chair.

Teacher Allegedly Smokes Pot With
Students (AP)

Teacher Allegedly Smokes Pot With
Students (AP) 04/08/2005 03:27 PM
AP - A 34-year-old high school math teacher was arrested after two female students said he served them vodka drinks and smoked marijuana with them at his house, officials said.

In Pleasanton, Teachers And Students Get
Apples

In Pleasanton, Teachers And Students Get
Apples 11/19/2003 06:53 PM
Pleasanton decided to give out the laptops so that students graduate with the skills they need to live in a digital age. By Diana Reinhart (San Antonio Express-News via MyAppleMenu)

The Album Club

The Album Club 07/31/2004 12:10 AM
No time to pick out your own music? Still like the CD format? Live in the UK? Well has The Rough Trade Shop got a club for you. Is this outmoded on arrival or an interesting variant on old style "X-Of-the-Month" clubs? I know I sometimes find it overwhelming to keep up with what's new'n'exciting.

The Belmont Club :

The Belmont Club : 03/23/2005 08:12 AM
Wretchard's The Belmont Club

wretchard.com/blogs/the_belmont_club/default.aspx
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Stupid Fun Club

Stupid Fun Club 06/04/2004 01:14 AM
Software Development Magazine: Inside the Stupid Fun Club.

Software Development Magazine wrote an article called "Inside the Stupid Fun Club" (registration required).

The author, Alexandra Weber Morales, unexpectedly encountered the Sad Robot, broken down and crying for help on the streets of Oakland.

We were shooting a couple of hidden camera reality TV "One Minute Movies" for NBC: one of a Sad Robot torn apart into pieces and pleading for help from passers by, and the other of a Robot Waiter taking orders,  serving food and bantering for a tip in a barbecue restaurant.

I (Don Hopkins) developed the custom "robot brain" software for Will Wright's Stupid Fun Club, mostly in Python. It involved writing lots of high level Python code and XML data, and integrating all kinds of different software components together with SWIG, C++, ActiveX, Java, IRC, HTTP and WiFi. The robot features 3D facial animation, speech synthesis and recognition, conversational scripting, artificial intelligence, personality simulation, telerobotic remote control via wireless networking, with an interactive web interface for controling its behavior in real time.

For another Stupid Fun Club project, I also used Python to develop expressive synthetic speech authoring tools (audio speech “phonoscoping”, like visual animation “rotoscoping”), and talking toy simulations.

Python is ideally suited for brainstorming and prototyping new product ideas, as well as developing custom real-time robotic software for supporting creative Stupid Fun Club projects like reality TV production.

Eventually, Alexandra Weber Morales tracked down the person responsible, Will Wright, at his private production company, the Stupid Fun Club. She asked Will about the Sad Robot:
[I've added my own comments like this.
-Don]

Uh, OK. So, what kinds of reactions did people have to Sad Robot?

Wright: A lot of people were talking directly to it. Most of the women who were walking alone just sped up like they were spooked by it. Most of the single men would stop and start stripping it for parts, ignoring that the robot was talking to them. And it was mostly the couples who would actually interact with it and try to help it. Some would have long conversations, pushing the buttons.

We had a whole sort of troubleshooting thing, and we wanted to see how far people would go to help it. It was sort of a Good Samaritan experiment.

She also asked about the software we developed to control the robot, simulate its personality, animate its face, and listen and talk with people.

Have you heard of an AI knowledge base called Cyc?

Wright: For the conversational side of it, we’re using something similar to Cyc—in fact, we were looking at Cyc. There’s so many different layers. First of all, there’s the voice recognition, which is getting much better but is still pretty limited. Then, once you have the voice, you go into the conversation engine, and then it’s doing something like Cyc or Alice or Eliza: trying to give an appropriate response to what your input was. One of the projects we’re working on here is this toy design where we have these toys that converse with each other via infrared text-to-speech.

There are all these different approaches to AI. Some of them are more brute force, like Cyc. There’s also artificial life, an attempt to evolve systems rather than build them from the ground up.

Where’s this work being done?

Wright: The Santa Fe Institute is one place. There’s genetic programming, or adaptive systems, to give computers a way to learn and get feedback. That looks like a more promising approach.

Back in the ’60s, when computers were first being used in business, everybody assumed we’d have artificial intelligence in 10 years. When 2001 came out, in 1967, and people came out of that movie saying, “I can’t believe that a computer will be able to play chess that well.” But they took the conversation with HAL for granted. In fact, it was the opposite: Chess turned out to be the easy part; natural conversation turned out to be the hard part. Within 20 years, we’re going to have machines like this that have full autonomy and pretty good conversational ability. We could build a stove that would have a long conversation with you. So the real interesting question for me now is, what’s going to happen when our world is surrounding us with intelligent machines? These are going to be the first aliens we meet.

Describe the software running this thing.

Wright: The conversational chatbot is Alice. It takes input and you give it a dictionary to define what it knows about.

[ALICE is written in Java, so Python talks to it through an IRC server running on the robot. We can connect to the same IRC channel over the wireless network, watch the messages going between ALICE and the brain, interject text to speak and think, switch moods, play facial animations, tweak the personality, execute commands, etc. Later I developed a more powerful web based " Homunculus" interface, for operating the robot in real time, with a web browser on a remote laptop or handheld.
-Don]

Winter: That’s connected to Microsoft speech recognition, which is fantastic.

[I wouldn't go that far. It doesn't suck, but "fantastic" is a stretch. 
-Don]

Winter: And some simple AI, since Alice may or may not understand what you’re talking about.

[In other words, Alice is like the mad old aunt with Tourette's Syndrome you keep locked away in the attic. Alice is only used as a backstop, when the Python/XML/AI layer of the robot brain can't think of anything to say. But it's turned off when we don't want the robot to seem insane.
-Don]

Winter: The most intelligent thing it ever did is we had an opera singer in here singing to the robot, but the robot didn’t like it. So she said, “maybe I should explain the story,” and after the singer finished, the robot paraphrased the whole thing back to her. It was about the most amazing thing we’d ever seen; we all just about started believing in robots at that moment.

[What's really interesting is abusing the speech recognizer, by putting the robot brain into a mode where it listens to itself (and anyone else) talk! It's like the mutating telephone gossip game, or the news media echo chamber: The robot repeats what it thinks it heard itself say, which it then mis-recognizes and distorts again and again, in a feedback loop of quasi-coherent rhyming speech! Any words you interject get mixed in and distorted in the speech recognition/synthesis feedback loop. It naturally finds and converges on extremely strange attractors in the recognizer's hidden markov models of the English language, chanting and mutating gramatically plausible but semantically ridiculous phrases, in response to whatever it thinks it hears. When properly configured, the robot can actually compose live performances of original surrealistic beat robopoetry, responding to the audience in real time! Stanislaw Lem calls that "Bitic Literature".
-Don]

Winter: When we take these in public, it seems like the people who are less technical savvy are the ones who interact with it, whereas the people with technical backgrounds are standing there reverse-engineering it.

Are you following what MIT has done with humanoid robots such as Kismet?

Wright: There are lots of research labs around the country building these types of robots, but they never take them out into the public. We drive them into a laundromat or a restaurant and see what the response is.

When we filmed Sad Robot, we also filmed a scene in a restaurant with a robot waiter. It was interesting how many people totally bought it. Usually within three or four minutes, they were completely normal about it. People kind of expect that there will be robots in the future; it’s just a matter of when.

[The Sad Robot: A pitiful broken down female robot is crying for help, bent out of shape and fallen on its side with a mangled tractor tread, next to a stinky garbage dumpster, begging reluctant passers by to turn it upright, describe its condition, press its big red reset button, adjust its controls, step away before it explodes, and call a mysterious professor on their cell phone.
The Robot Waiter: An earnest robot waiter, just trying to do its job taking orders, delivering food to tables, telling jokes and bantering for tips, and collecting dirty dishes. Afterwards submits itself to a Robot Waiter Performance Evaluation Survey, and begs the human to give it good marks, otherwise it might lose its job.
-Don]

Robot: If you could have any kind of robot, what would it be? The goal is elimination of crime, combined with rehabilitation of criminals … Yes, it seems very long to me, too.

What do you use for automated testing?

Wright: Our own suites. Most of our stuff is in C++, but we have a proprietary visual scripting language I designed, called Edith, for the behavioral code for the Sims. It’s totally geared to AI and the Sims.

[The robot software is written in C++, Python and XML. Edith is used to program simulated personalities, but for simulated people instead of real robots. Edith is the tool for programming The Sims, for scripting the artificial intelligence of the characters and objects. The Sims visual programming language itself is called SimAntics. Edith is Maxis's official tool for programming SimAntics code, while iffpencil2 is another third party SimAntics programming tool, developed outside of Maxis.
-Don]

Winter: I think it’s time for the Christmas robot.

Wright: Are you running that … weapon? I don’t know if we want to sit here. [A dancing snowman on a wheeled platform with a circular saw mounted on its front bumper approaches a plastic toy-store robot.]

Winter: No, you would die. You’d better take cover.

[The interview ends.]

The snowman quickly demolishes the toy, shooting debris throughout the warehouse. With Winter’s encouragement, I spend 10 minutes in a nonsensical conversation with the robot. He also shows me the Minute Movie that have been made for NBC—and they’re hilarious.

I leave this unconventional interview impressed with the way the Stupid Fun Club has turned a fascination with robots and toys into a lucrative and wholly entertaining enterprise. Meanwhile, the larger concerns about the technical strengths, limitations and implications of these semiautonomous machines go mostly unanswered. Wright and Winter seem firmly on the side of presentation, and somewhat unwilling to delve deeply into how their toys work—as if to say, “Where’s the fun in asking all these questions? Just talk to the robot.”

I'm certainly interested in delving deeply into how the robot brain works myself, but not everyone else is. So I used Python to develop a high-level XML based AI and wireless web remote control system, which enables creative writers and designers like Will Wright to script and control the robot behavior, and reconfigure it for different scenarios, without needing to deal with Python, C++ or the other software components that went into building it.

[Don Hopkins' RadiOMatic BlogUTron]

Fan Club Kit For 2005

Fan Club Kit For 2005 03/17/2005 03:10 AM
Starwars.com have posted all the goodies you get in the new and improved Hyperspace Fan Club kit. There's a sticker, poster, trading card and so much more! Check it out!

"The Belmont Club "

"The Belmont Club " 09/18/2004 08:51 AM

The iPod Club

The iPod Club 08/27/2004 02:03 PM
By Damien Barrett (via MyAppleMenu)

Six Months to the UPS Club

Six Months to the UPS Club 06/05/2005 11:27 PM
"...how long have you been running Adsense? And you're not in the UPS club yet? Why not?"

The Belmont Club

The Belmont Club 09/11/2004 04:28 PM
view

belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004/09/escaping-kill-zone-dan-rathers -defense.html
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Hospitality Club

Hospitality Club 04/18/2004 08:23 PM
The Hospitality Club is a similar idea to CouchSurfing in that both sites provide a database of people offering free lodging to each other when visiting foreign countries. The Hospitality Club has been going for nearly three years and has over 12,500 members in 142 coun tries. The site has wiki-like features allowing members to edit travel guides for each country, region and city.

Hi, Sarah - Welcome to the Club!

Hi, Sarah - Welcome to the Club! 01/17/2004 11:15 PM

Hello. My name is Sarah and I'm an RSS-addict.

"OK, so the # of feeds I'm getting just went over 100. I officially cannot live without RSS now...." [Librarian InBlack]

Fat Club redux

Fat Club redux 08/27/2004 01:34 PM
Yesterday, Mutsumi in our office told me half a dozen times that I looked "bigger". I'd been thinking about how to lose some weight and I remembered Fa t Club because Jan e linked to a Fat Club entry on her blog. For some reason, I seem to be able to motivate myself to lose weight when I'm competing. I asked everyone in our office if they wanted to join Fat Club 2004. Kuri, Jim and Nob agreed to participate. The race is to see who can lose 10% of their body weight first and sustain it for one week. The last one in has to be a slave to the winner for a day. Slave rights can be sold or rented. We decided to set up a private wiki to organize this event.

Mizuka bought a fancy scale awhile ago hinting that I should probably lose some weight. I jumped on it this morning and it told me that I had the body of a 49 year old. (I'm 38.) The fancy scale uses Bioelectric Impedance to measure your body fat and calculates basal metabolism, body fat percentage, muscle percentage, internal body fat level, your body mass index and your body age equivalent. Let me just say it was very motivating. This new scale has 6 contacts, two for your hands and 4 for your feet and seems more accurate than some of the older models.

Comment - TrackBack

Belmont Club

Belmont Club 02/15/2004 10:18 PM
Wretchard at the Belmont club wrote: .. Wretchard .. observes:

belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_belmontclub_archive.ht ml#107681898064838240
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"Belmont Club"

"Belmont Club" 05/03/2004 02:23 AM

"club Mandrake"

"club Mandrake" 01/03/2004 10:00 PM

Strip Club

Strip Club 04/09/2004 04:03 PM
0.6.2 released

Club A Penguin

Club A Penguin 01/05/2005 02:01 PM
Club a Penguin [Flash] is a combination of a batting cage and a driving range. One click sets the bat; a second click swings.

"The Belmont club"

"The Belmont club" 06/12/2004 09:26 AM

Tarot Club

Tarot Club 12/03/2003 11:05 AM
Création

Working At The Club

Working At The Club 06/14/2004 05:11 AM
With more and more people telecommuting or "freelancing," the home office has been getting a lot more attention. Still, not everyone likes to work from home (and for some people, it's really difficult). There are tons of "temporary office space" companies that buy up buildings and let people rent out single offices. However, one company is trying to go (just slightly) beyond that by setting up a "work club", where you pay your membership dues and get to hang out in the common areas and meet your co-workers. You also can use meeting rooms, phone booths, and some limited amount of personal office space. Honestly, though, this doesn't seem all that different from most temporary or executive office space operations - other than they seem to be trying to make it sound cooler with trendy phrases to describe everything. For example, meeting rooms are "team spaces" while the cubicle farm is a "touchdown space." Right.

Teacher Accused of Duct-Taping Students
(AP)

Teacher Accused of Duct-Taping Students
(AP) 03/06/2004 02:00 AM
AP - A high school math teacher is accused of using duct tape and plastic ties to restrain female students in his classroom.

BuzzFlash Called It! Conservative
columnist Charles Krauthammer tells Bush
to Dump the U.N.! 3/12

BuzzFlash Called It! Conservative
columnist Charles Krauthammer tells Bush
to Dump the U.N.! 3/12 03/13/2003 10:21 AM
"Call the Vote. Walk Away." .. Review

track this site | 8 links

Grok Description matches for "Teachers At California High School Refuse To Act When Founder Of A Conservative Club Is Threatened And Harassed By Other Students -- One Teacher Called Tim A Nazi, While Another Described The Club As "A Bunch Of Bigots.""
GrokA matches for "Teachers At California High School Refuse To Act When Founder Of A Conservative Club Is Threatened And Harassed By Other Students -- One Teacher Called Tim A Nazi, While Another Described The Club As "A Bunch Of Bigots.""

"Teachers At California High School Refuse To Act When Founder Of A Conservative Club Is Threatened And Harassed By Other Students -- One Teacher Called Tim A Nazi, While Another Described The Club As "A Bunch Of Bigots.""

The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry: