I was gobsmacked and furious when I read this story about Todays Bus.
Just to help promote awareness about this: federal law (Americans with Disabilities Act) demands equal access to service dogs on busses. The number for the ADA office in the U.S. Department of Justice is (800) 514-0301 (voice) and (800) 514-0383 (TDD). You can find additional information about ADA protections at ada.gov.
Giddy with my earlier technical success of the week—networking the tivos in the house to share content between themselves and with itunes—I felt compelled to share the love…
So, after much careful deliberation (read: saw one in the store, scanned over the box, started drooling, and snatched it up immediately), I bought a new Slingbox.
To mitigate the chilly weather, CalTort is offering free chips and queso or salsa with the purchase of an entree today. Just pass the cashier with a piece of paper with the secret password–”spatula”–written on it.
Here’s the email I received yesterday about the promotion:
Rumor has it that it’s going to be 25 degrees tomorrow, Friday, January 26th (which of course means it’ll be 75 and balmy since I’m writing an email about it), so we’re rewarding anyone who ventures out FREE Chips and Queso or Salsa when they purchase an entree and give the spunky cashier a piece of paper with the secret password “Spatula” written on it And for all of our new customers who have never participated in a “bad weather Cal Tort email” (welcome by the way — you look fabulous) here are the very strict, law enforceable, secret password rules: You can tell your friends, your co-workers, your family, your pets, anyone at all, about the secret password, just not people already in the restaurant. Stay warm and we’ll see you tomorrow! Pam
The Newseum has a very slick online tool that lets you browse the day’s front pages of newspapers from >500 papers in >50 countries. Check it out.
Because we live in the internet age and taking out the trash just doesn’t cut it anymore, one of my quasi-official roles in life is “Household IT Manager.” On that front, I’m happy to report that my Master Plan has come to fruition. The Wireless G router and network is happy as a clam, encrypted, and firewalled. All the computers (Mac and Windows) and all the gaming systems (Xbox and Wii) play nicely and together on it. And yesterday, after several hours of tinkering and tech quality time, I finished the pièce de résistance: the two Tivos share content with one another, and select programs are automatically pulled into itunes nightly and encoded for ipod viewing.
I haven’t felt this tech savvy and clever since sixth grade, when I ditched my alarm clock and replaced it with a timed power outlet (meant for lawn sprinklers) that I rigged up to wake me by turning on the room lights and cueing up my tape player.
Gravy additional tech accomplishments of the week:
* Created a new installation of the just-released version of WordPress. It’s for a new blog I’m starting up on conflict resolution-related research.
* Upgraded and re-themed the script I use to run the intranet (private group wiki, forums, and newsletter) for the Maryland Conflict Resolution in Higher Ed. Consortium.
* Upgraded my installation of Moodle in preparation for the Spring semester. To Moodle’s credit, in over five years of using the program, this was the first time I ever hit a serious problem when upgrading the script. Fixing it involved hand-editing its MySQL backend databases, which was not fun. But it’s working like a charm now, with all my past course data intact.
Sure, the personal robots, rocket cars, and nanotechnology are still a little slow in coming around, but all-in-all I’d say I’m pretty pleased with tech this week.
p.s. While I just wrote out this glowing entry about technology, this tech-related story has me irate.
The start of the Spring semester is looming, and in case you’re interested in following along, I’m posting the texts I’m assigning. These are all graduate courses in an MS conflict resolution program. As with most graduate classes, a significant amount of the assigned course reading is in separate course packets (done as e-reserves nowadays) of academic journal articles.
Approaches to Conflict Resolution
Fisher, R., & Shapiro, D. (2006). Beyond reason. New York: Penguin.
Isenhart, MW & Spangle, M. (2000). Collaborative approaches to resolving conflict. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Mayer, D. (2004). Beyond neutrality. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Stone, D., Patton, B., & Heen, S. (1999). Difficult conversations: How to discuss what matters most. New York: Viking.
Research Methods in Conflict Resolutions
Robson, C. (2002). Real world research: A resource for social scientists and practitioner-researchers (2nd ed.). Madden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers.
Students are also required to read one additional substantive text based on their choice of research methodology for their pilot research project.
Mediation Theory & Practice
Bush, R. A. B., & Folger, J. P. (2005). The promise of mediation: The transformative approach to conflict (Rev. ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Moore, C. (2003). The mediation process: Practical strategies for resolving conflict (3rd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Schrock-Shenk, C. (Ed.). (2000). Mediation and facilitation training manual: Foundations and skills for constructive conflict transformation. Mennonite Conciliation Service.
Organizational Conflict
Constantino, C., & Merchant, C. S. (1995). Designing conflict management systems: A guide to creating productive and healthy organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Students are required to read two additional substantive texts based on their choice of presentation topics.
Just for the record, I don’t recommend or condone a teaching load of four graduate courses in a semester. It’s difficult (at best) to balance with the other academic duties of research, publication, practice work, community service, and student advising & mentorship. Thankfully, these are all topics I love and that I’ve taught several times before.
To help get your imagination going on ways to visually represent what you’re trying to convey: Periodic Table of Visualization Methods.
Carter and Bartlet are doing their usual snoozling together, and me, I’m working on course designs for the upcoming semester. I’ll be teaching four grad classes this Spring: Research Methods, Mediation, Approaches to Conflict Management, and Organizational Conflict.
And the brief iTunes playlist I’m working to, loosely inspired by the cats and mood:
We’re Going to Be Friends, Jack Johnson
How Can I Love You If You Won’t Lie Down, Silver Jews
Folsom Prison Blues, Johnny Cash
Mad World, Gary Jules
I Hear the Bells, Mike Doughty
Three Little Birds, Bob Marley
They, Jem
Lonely Little Petunia, Imogen Heap
Time is On My Side, Irma Thomas
Kodachrome, Paul Simon
Where Does the Good Go?, Tegan and Sara
One Fine Day, Matt Perrone
Circle in the Sand, Rickie Lee Jones
Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay, Otis Redding
I mentioned evidence based medicine in an earlier post, and here’s a follow-up link: A resource guide on “What proportion of healthcare is evidence based?”.
Of course, medical research isn’t my area of study or expertise. But its a situation that holds analogies to conflict resolution work, where practitioners work in high stakes situations where (at minimum) they wish to do no harm and where practice is outpacing and overreaching research to an alarming degree.
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