The Facebook Project - The Missing Box: The Racial Politics Behind the Facebook Interface

There is no race, ethnicity or nationality category available the default Facebook profile. This, combined with the fact that Facebook is a visually-driven website, suggests that Facebook serves to inadvertently or covertly perpetuate two racist or discriminatory norms: the colorblind mentality and racialized visual classification of others. This paper quickly traverses through a basic theory of identity that dictates that persons incur an on-going dialectic between individual and social identity, both on and offline. It contends that Facebook is an advantageous place to perform and portray one???s social identity and is largely visually-driven, therefore the interface is of paramount importance. Racial, ethnic, or national identity is of significance to many individuals and the lack of a place to express this is a form of discrimination. Such a category should be added to Facebook???s set of basic identity options. Guidelines for a successful implementation are provided.unpublishedis peer reviewe

Intellectual Property Paranoia and the Writing Center

The current atmosphere of numerous academic institutions is one of suspicion regarding intellectual ethical transgressions. Universities that have longstanding honor systems, like Southwestern University, dismiss this paranoia as being unrelated to their establishment because the honor code system protects them. The honor code incites additional thought regarding consultation methods in writing centers like Southwestern’s Debbie Ellis Writing Center (DEWC). One must question what Southwestern students are truly affirming when writing “I have neither given nor received aid on this examination, nor have I seen anyone else do so” on an assignment they have taken to the writing center (Southwestern University 58). Are they saying they did not benefit from their visit to the writing center, or are they merely affirming that they did not engage in unethical behavior? According to Stephen North, “Nearly everyone who writes likes–and needs–to talk about his or her writing…. A writing center is an institutional response to this need” (North 71). In addition to fulfilling the needs of the university’s writers by creating a place for discussions about writing, the writing center complicates the supposedly clear ethical and non-ethical dichotomy of the honor code system by being an institutionalized exception to that system. As an exception to the honor code system, the DEWC calls into question the viability of that system and the ideas of intellectual property that serve as its foundations.University Writing Cente

Building a Community Around the Writing Center

Recruitment and retention are important issues on every campus but especially so on small campuses like that of Casper College. My predecessor, Bob Mittan, believed as I do that the Writing Center should serve as a community as well as a campus resource. His reasons focused on how the community could be involved with the writing center while my reasons focus on how the writing center can be involved with the community. In becoming a community resource, our center serves to demystify academe both for those in the community who feel they are too old or incapable to succeed in college and for young writers in high school who may not have decided to attend college yet. As a result, we are acquiring something of a reputation for helping students and community members with résumé cover letters and creative writing projects as well as scholarship letters and essays.University Writing Cente

Living on the Edge: Against Epistemic Permissivism

Epistemic Permissivists face a special problem about the relationship between our first- and higher-order attitudes. They claim that rationality often permits a range of doxastic responses to the evidence. Given plausible assumptions about the relationship between your first- and higher-order attitudes, it can't be rational to adopt a credence on the edge of that range. But Permissivism says that, for some such range, any credence in that range is rational. Permissivism, in its traditional form, cannot be right. I consider some new ways of developing Permissivism to avoid this argument, but each has problems of its own

How Strong Is a Counterfactual?

The literature on counterfactuals is dominated by strict accounts and variably strict accounts. Counterexamples to the principle of Antecedent Strengthening were thought to be fatal to SA; but it has been shown that by adding dynamic resources to the view, such examples can be accounted for. We broaden the debate between VSA and SA by focusing on a new strengthening principle, Strengthening with a Possibility. We show dynamic SA classically validates this principle. We give a counterexample to it and show that extra dynamic resources cannot help SA. We then show VSA accounts for the counterexample if it allows for orderings on worlds that are not almost-connected, and that such an ordering naturally falls out of a Kratzerian ordering source semantics. We conclude that the failure of Strengthening with a Possibility tells strongly against Dynamic SA and in favor of an ordering source-based version of VSA

Can Children’s Museums Deliver Effective Health Outreach?: Evaluation Results of the HealthWorks! Be A Food Groupie Program for Elementary Students

Objectives: We evaluated the Be A Food Groupie (BAFG) program’s impact on health/nutrition knowledge among elementary students who received BAFG at HealthWorks! children’s museum. Methods: In 2012-2013, we conducted a matched comparison evaluation using pre-/post-tests among 446 intervention and 524 comparison students (N = 970) in Grades 3-5 recruited from 11 Mississippi schools to determine whether BAFG improved health/nutrition knowledge across three domains: 1) comprehending food labels, 2) understanding serving sizes, 3) understanding food groups. Results: After controlling for pre-test scores, ANCOVA results indicate that intervention students scored significantly higher on the post-test across all three domains and across all three grades as compared to comparison students. Third-grade intervention students had significantly higher post-test scores overall than their comparison counterparts, F (1,288) = 52.02, p \u3c .001, h2 = .153. Fourth-grade intervention students had significantly higher post-test scores overall than their comparison counterparts, F (1,373) = 58.52, p \u3c .001, h2 = .136. Fifth-grade intervention students had significantly higher post-test scores overall than their comparison counterparts, F (1,300) = 151.71, p \u3c .001, h2 = .336. Conclusion: BAFG results support the argument that interactive health/nutrition education programs at children’s museums can positively impact children’s health knowledge and, therefore, can support learning beyond the school setting. When children’s museums and schools collaborate to develop long-term partnerships to enhance children’s learning experiences that—like BAFG—meet state-mandated requirements, programmatic impacts can be further augmented. Children’s museums can provide supplemental health-related education—including obesity prevention information—that can be reinforced at school, home, and in the community

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE DEMOGRAPHICS OF U.S. FARM OPERATORS

Farm Management,

Q&A Platforms Evaluated Using Butler University Q&A Intelligence Index

A new study using the Butler University Q&A Intelligence Index measures how various mobile Q&A platforms deliver quality, accurate answers in a timely manner to a broad variety of questions. Based on the results of our analysis, ChaCha led all Q&A platforms on mobile devices. Results of the study are based upon review of a large set of responses from each of the major Q&A platforms, coupled with a comparison of disparate Q&A platforms that serve answers in different ways. Our methodology included the creation of a new metric, termed the Butler University Q&A Intelligence Index, which measures the likelihood that a user can expect to receive a correct answer in a timely manner to any random question asked using natural language. We asked questions via mobile services and randomized the questions to cover both popular and long-tail knowledge requests

Does Health Insurance Coverage Lead to Better Health and Educational Outcomes? Evidence from Rural China

Using 2006 China Agricultural Census (CAC), we examine whether the introduction of the New Cooperative Medical System (NCMS) has affected child mortality, maternal mortality, and school enrollment of the 6-16 years olds. Our data cover 5.9 million people living in eight low-income rural counties, of which four adopted the NCMS by 2006 and four did not adopt it until 2007. Raw data suggest that enrolling in NCMS is associated with better school enrollment and lower mortality of young children and pregnant women. However, using a difference-in-difference propensity score method, we find most of these differences are driven by the endogenous introduction and take-up of NCMS, and out method overcomes classical propensity score matching's failure to address the selection bias. While the NCMS does not affect child mortality and maternal mortality, it does help improve the school enrollment of six-year-olds.