Some people have asked about the Gethsemane_Environmental Google Group, used for the Gethsemane Lutheran Church Environmental Efficiency and Sustainability Team. Here is some helpful information about that group (and signing up for and Google Groups in General).

The Group Home is at Gethsemane_Environmental
https://groups.google.com/group/gethsemane_environmental

Any member can invite new members! Just send an invitation when you are logged in. An invitation will be sent to the recipient’s email address. They are then “approved” by a Group Manager or Owner (currently Joanne Leussing and myself … This is to screen out spammers.).

So please go ahead and invite new members! … or just send them to the group home.

---

More information

Besides an invitation from a member, there are a few ways to join Gethsemane_Environmental:

1. The easiest way is as a Google subscriber, to visit the group.

2. It is also possible to sign up for the email list without joining Google.
This is not well documented. There is something in the Google Groups Help:
http://support.google.com/groups/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=46606
that seems to indicate one could subscribe via simply sending an email to [Groupname]+subscribe[AT]googlegroups.com , (in this case):
Gethsemane_Environmental+subscribegooglegroupscom  (Gethsemane_Environmental+subscribegooglegroupscom)  

3. Alternatively, on can sign up for the email list here:

Subscribe to Gethsemane_Environmental

Email:

Visit this group

In these days when everyone is crowing about “STEM,” we hear from the experience of Christopher Dawson, one of my favorite EdTech bloggers, writing in the ZDNet Education blog:

What do you do with a BA in English?

All of a sudden, that BA in English with a minor in theater started to look awfully attractive. I can’t think of a more important “21st Century Skill” than communication, whether written or verbal. A bit of theater? Gee, maybe he’ll be able to think on his feet and improvise and actually glance away from the projector or his feet and talk to his audience, whether that audience is in a boardroom or a lecture hall. There is nothing more disconcerting than watching a business leader reading from notes or delivering a death-by-PowerPoint presentation, droning on about slides that I could just as easily read myself on a set of handouts. Disconcerting because by the time someone is in a position of leadership, they should be able to speak extemporaneously and yet remarkably common.

…

It isn’t too much of a stretch to say that a degree in English (or communications, or whatever) might just be one of the more useful and relevant degrees a student could obtain, with applications across a wide variety of disciplines. The point of college remains to learn to think (and master beer pong, of course); that can happen with a degree in biophysics just as easily as a degree in the humanities. That liberal arts major, though, just might have better job prospects in a knowledge economy than the biophysics major who avoided English and public speaking courses like the plague.

I’ve always said that engineers are common, but rare is the engineer who knows how to communicate and manage people. There are many corollaries to the assertion that STEM is not THE answer to our concerns about our educational system. (Indeed, there is a growing appreciation of the need for critical thought and the ability to express oneself!)

Below is the handout from October 17, 2010 at O.A.G.C. Parent Day:
(printable PDF of original)

Web Hosting, and some “lighter” options:

• Dreamhost – www.dreamhost.com – free hosting for verifiable 501c3 organizations! Dreamhost has convenient 1-click methods to setup WordPress, and much more
• 1and1.com – “Linux hosting” 1&1 Beginner inexpensive. 1and1 has a number of preloaded WordPress templates
• others … see wordpress.org/hosting/ for some possibilities, Yahoo is expensive
• WordPress, Blogger, etc also have possibilities – e.g. see www.blogger.com cahspta.blogspot.com // WordPress.com (vs. org) hosts blogs. None of these are on your domain.
• Google sells Google Apps service where own domain is used with Gmail, etc. … appears might have a free option for 501c3 nonprofits!
• Google Groups, Yahoo Groups – good for forums, but such can be subsumed into WP

Web Hosting particulars:

• WordPress (WP) – wordpress.org – Is a blogging/CMS (Content Management System) platform that runs on a server with PHP and MySQL
• Latest ver’s WordPress include automatic update of program and plugins
• other CMSs are available:
• Drupal
• EZ Publish
• Joomla – more commercialized than WP, harder to use
• Other items of note
• phpBB – Forums, “Bulletin Board”)
• Gallery Photo Gallery … can be integrated into WordPress
• Moodle is the free! Open source version of Blackboard. (It is available or installable on web hosts, included in EdUbuntu, openSUSE Education-Li-f-e)
• Akismet (Automattic Kismet) is a necessary WP plugin if you allow posting comments, to block spam. It is incredibly effective! You need an API key, see http://akismet.com/personal/.
• Subscribe2 is also useful to allow people to sign up for email – see Open Source Apostle Blog (http://blog.osapostle.com/subscribe), or ColumbusPACE.org Subscribe pages to see Subscribe in action.
• Other plug ins help obfuscate email addresses of posts and posters. There are many ways to fight the harvesting of addresses by spammers. Some of these may be included in the hosting services default setups of WP.

Other Items of Interest, and Privacy Soapbox:

• Free and Open Source software can provide much of what our school districts spend endless dollars upon (possibly at expense of funding GT programs and staff), for lower total cost. The options are often cheaper, more efficient, greener, more versatile, and just better! Tools are available for just about any kind of computing activity, from basic word processing to programming and highly specialized scientific tools. Opportunities even exist for gifted students to participate and contribute to ongoing global projects. Visit my web site and drop me a line if you are curious. (This interest is why I call it Open Source Apostle.)
• I know you wouldn’t send highly personal mail on a postcard, so why do people send email “naked.” I almost despair of encouraging people to use encryption as an “envelope.” Indeed, there are some rough edges in using it with popular web mail applications – though it is pretty seamless by now in traditional email clients as Thunderbird, using Enigmail. I wish we’d all use GPG/PGP.

I have moved the Open Source Apostle Blog to it’s own subdomain:
blog.OSApostle.com
instead of having it at OSApostle.com/wordpress

Please let me know if you find any old links that need to be repaired.

I saw a story on slashdot recently that is particularly relevant given Facebook again being in the middle of a tempest regarding their ever-changing security settings, practices, and defaults.

“Two online projects will scan and edit Facebook privacy settings for maximum
protection: ReclaimPrivacy (reclaimprivacy.org) and SaveFace (untangle.com).
The article says: ‘Several new applications have launched this week that are
designed to easily reset a Facebook member’s privacy settings, following new
changes from the company that make a sizable chunk of profile content public
by default when it was once kept under lock and key.’”

Here are the utilities mentioned. The first seems to be more flexible, while the second easily locks down your FB. These work for now, subject to any changes that FB may make that accidentally or deliberately hamper them.

http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/

This website provides an independent and open tool for scanning your
Facebook privacy settings. The source code and its development will always
remain open and transparent.

1. Drag this link to your web browser bookmarks bar: Scan for Privacy
2. Log in to facebook.com and then click that bookmark
3. You will see a series of privacy scans that inspect your privacy
settings and warn you about settings that might be unexpectedly public.
4. Follow us on Facebook to hear about the latest updates.

http://www3.untangle.com/saveface

SaveFace™ by Untangle® is a simple-to-install Bookmark utility that
automatically resets your Facebook® settings to restore your privacy.

SaveFace sets your privacy settings back to Friends Only, for all the
following:

* Contact Information
* Search Settings
* Friends, Tags and Connections
* Personal Information and Posts

Best of all, it’s free. Untangle collects no personal information from you or
your Facebook when you use this Bookmark utility.

T.R. Reid’s book: The Healing of America: a global quest for better, cheaper, and fairer health care, is timely material for deliberations of how we might manage to craft a health care system for all the people of our nation — instead of an insurance system for some, and a death sentence for others. Reid’s paramount point is that we need to consider health care for all citizens as a MORAL issue! We need to keep this in mind as we contemplate the rest of his data.

Reid explores at length the health care systems in other countries, including personal experience during periods of residence abroad. He uses the “test case” of seeking physician advice concerning some minor shoulder pain and mobility issues stemming from an ancient injury. Responses are illuminating. Whereas his U.S. physician is quick to suggest an expensive and somewhat risky surgical shoulder replacement, other doctors suggest various alternatives before jumping to surgery. It is no wonder why we have the most expensive health care system by far … along with one of the worst outcomes.

Reid categorizes health care systems into four basic categories, and of course hybrid mixes thereof.

1. There is the Bismarck model, originally from Germany, where regulated private non-profit insurance plans cover everyone, and people visit private physicians. Employers and employees share the premiums. The government assures that those without employment coverage do not fall through the cracks.
2. There is the Beveridge model, originating in post WWII Britain, financed by the government through taxes. The National Health Service is the single payer, with physicians being private, and hosptals nationalized.
3. The National Health Insurance model, a la Canada, is a hybrid of the first two.
4. The Out of Pocket model is the third world model. Those who can afford care get it: others suffer and die.

The U.S. has the craziest health care system: no system! For most of us for-profit insurance companies run the show. Care can vary from Cadillac to nearly worthless, as they play games to minimize “loss” and maximize returns pay shareholders and executives first. We also have the National Health Insurance (Medicare), and the Beveridge model (veterans, TriCare). … We even have the third world Out of Pocket model for the “have-nots.” Ironically, with increasing reliance on high deductible plans, coverage caps, and exclusions: this is effectively what we have even for many who have “insurance!”

Reid’s survey leads me to this conclusion: in every nation that provides effective health care with better outcomes at lower cost than the U.S., the standard care is provided without for profit health insurance. Either the government fulfills those functions as a single payer, or insurers (happily) provide the standard package (and with guaranteed coverage), competing on the “extras” — things like private rooms, super swift payment, … and more spa coverage! Even Switzerland, the supposed citadel of capitalism, wisely converted their system to a not-for-profit insurance basis — ironically at the very time that Clinton’s efforts for reform in the U.S. were being shot down by carpet bombing of “Harry and Louise” commercials in the early 1990s.

When we have for-profit insurance providers (with coverage linked to employment) as a significant portion of our (fragmented) system, there is an irresistible temptation for the insurance companies to aggressively seek to shift costs to someone else, whether that be some government plan (e.g. Medicare, as we age), the insured themself, or the plan from the person’s next employment. In a society where job mobility is accelerating in a breathtaking manner, there is likely to be an opportunity in 2.3 years or so to “dump” any adverse risks. (Then the new insurance company can exclude “pre-existing conditions!”) Needless to say, this risk-shifting scenario provides little incentive for preventive care, in contrast to rational systems where there is a continuity. Whether the provider is a government agency, or not-for-profit insurers with universal coverage, when the payer is in for the long haul, it has an incentive to reduce future costs (and provide better outcomes!) by taking care of the little things – such as preventive medicine. (In Britain, for example, physicians, media, and even signs on buses, encourage people to visit the clinic for their “flu jab,” or other preventive care. In the U.S. the only reason many insurance plans cover any prevention is as public relations or a marketing tool.)

It is also worth noting that in most of these health care systems, the primary care physician is respected as the one who coordinates care and facilitates prevention. This contrasts to the U.S. system where we have 2/3 specialists.

I would recommend that every member of Congress (and those in the Administration) read this book. Then they can refuse the gobs of cash from the Ins Co’s … and maybe craft us a sensible system of health care in the good old U. S. of A.! … Whatever we do we will need universal coverage (the big pool), and a removal of the profit-seeking and cost-shifting motives which distort our current environment to the point of imminent collapse.

Of course, we’ll have to overcome that streak of American exceptionalism whereby we insist upon doing nothing as others have done it, but only as we have “invented.” We didn’t invent the health care anti-system we now have; but we could invent one that uses the best of the experience of others to determine what might give us a real system with effective outcomes at much lower cost.

As we can see, it will be very difficult to change the system due to the financial power of the Insurance-Health complex. It will take true moral courage. Of course, if we fail, we’ll all go broke together!

I read a provocative book recently, Deer Hunting With Jesus, by a guy named Joe Bageant. Joe is one who was born in the hills of the Virginia-West Virginia border area, “escaped” to become a sociologist, and returned. This book, subtitled “Dispatches from America’s Class War,” was published in 2007.

Read this book if you want some insight (through vignettes of Joe’s old friends, neighbors, and acquaintances) into why it can be so hard for the classic “liberals” to enlist people such as those from the Va/WVa border into progressive causes. (Largely, they are just too busy surviving!)

Joe goes into the myriad ways that the established class structure is maintained, quite obvious in these towns and countryside; but also prototypical for the rest of the nation. He also points the finger at the media, complicit in bread and circuses (mostly the later!), and the myths of America (“American Hologram”) that enlist people in a false patriotism.

The blame is not just on the exploiting class, but also on the well-meaning liberals who don’t understand how to communicate with these Scots-Irish descendants and their type.

I almost had to quite reading when I got to the chapter about the American Health System. It described painfully how people, after being milked of their productive energies and exploited by financial rackets, are left to die in sub-standard care facilitities. Ironically, some of these urine-reeking nursing homes were the eagerly received community hospitals in better days, where babies were born and people mended. That was before the profitable “not-for-profit” health care and insurance industries figured out how to squeeze more out of them for their executives and shareholders.

The title comes from the conflation of “down home religion” with gun culture. Joe explains how some of this is related to the frontier experience and the cultural origins of the people who settled here. He mercilessly describes how the rest of us were asleep at the switch while the right wing figured out what buttons to press to enlist these folks into their electoral army.

There’s a heck of a lot more here. One thing I came away with, though, is the importance of education. In many of these places there is a covert conspiracy to keep people dumb so they stay in their “place.” (After all, if the privileged children of the upper class had to compete on a level field with the children otherwise encumbered by poverty and despair, the outcomes might be surprising! Joe includes some stories of potential wasted, as he describes people’s change from friends in his youth to broken down or embittered old age.) People who are functionally illiterate, or not much better, will have trouble exercising their full rights and responsibilities as citizens, instead of merely being consumers and a labor pool.

Joe is a bit pessimistic though most of the stories. He’s only a few years older than I am. I think that good teachers, a little more economic security, and a re-invigorated union movement could work wonders — at least with the next generation!

Guy L. Clifton, M.D. wrote an interesting book about health care in America. The important point he makes is that no matter what system we may devise, ultimately we can’t fix the current crisis without controlling costs.

Clifton’s describes from personal experience (as a neurosurgeon) how most physicians work without any clear notion of what is the most effective standard of care. For example, spinal fusion procedures which are truly effective for a narrow range of cases are used for many inappropriate – to the point of being counter-productive. (Then there are the drug companies, and others who esteem profit inordinately; who are motivated to push their wares onto harried physicians as the cure-all. They also attack consumers through advertising in a manner that used to be considered unethical if not illegal among medical professionals.)

Clifton’s contribution to the discussion is to suggest that we have a Quality Assurance organization/agency which seeks to involve physicians in developing scientifically-based standards for care. He believes that an incredible savings can result.

I picked this book up recently, in the way in which the original “hypertext” steers me from one read to another, and must share briefly.

You may know that I am a strong advocate for the appropriate education of our gifted children, many of whom struggle to move forward in a world where standing out risks being leveled as Alexander the Great sought to level his vassal peoples. You’d think I’d be happy to see the vocational training programs cast aside and things like the new Ohio CORE requirements where all high school graduates in 2014 must have taken Algebra 2, etc.

The truth is, I feel a little queasy about the assumption that all children must attend college — at least as we traditionally see college. … The truth of the matter is that college has become dangerously commodified! Often all the student is doing is just buying a credential (an expensive one at that), and not really learning the critical thinking that is associated with a classic education in the Arts, Sciences, Humanities.

In Shop Class As Soulcraft, Matthew Crawford, takes a look at “An Inquiry into the Value of Work.” Crawford made a pilgrimage from Think Tank to the motorcycle shop, and in this move he gleaned some thoughts pertinent to this subtitle.

Crawford maintains that many of these technical/vocational “craft” type jobs actually do use many of the practitioner’s “higher” faculties, in such procedures as learning how to systematically solve problems – e.g. the skilled mechanic can listen to an engine and learn much (just as the skilled physician used to practice auscultation!). … There’s also the added benefit that many of the repair type crafts cannot be out-sourced!

Recently a friend innocently sent me a DOCX file. People sending these appears to be a growing problem. Thus I must post some thoughts on the use of Microsoft’s closed file formats – especially the latest travesty: the “X” files.

Please Do Not Send ANYONE DOCX files! The same applies to any of Microsoft’s newest file formats from Office 2007: XLSX, PPTX.

[If you just want the HOWTO at this moment, you may skip to Suggestions.]

While there has always been a concern about sending people Microsoft’s older formats (e.g. Word 97-2000-XP), the problem has been raised a quantum level higher by the new formats in Office 2007!

If you have Microsoft Office 2007, you may not even know you are sending problematic files. Without intervention, this situation is the default if your brand new computer has MS Office 2007! The application uses the —X file formats by default, and the file manager by default turns off viewing extensions. So you innocently think you are just sending a “word” (word processor)” file! … Once you are aware of the issues concerning file formats and Microsoft monopoly shenanigans, you may follow my suggestions to do your part for interoperability – and freedom!

Most recent office suites can read and write the older DOC/XLS/PPT files (sometimes better than MS Office: OpenOffice.org can often open “broken” Word files!). … But … The only people who can read DOCX (or anyX) natively are those with the very newest version of MS Word (2007). Many people. even with MS Word 2003, won’t know what to do with these “X” files!!

Now there are ways to read these, but even then, the “X” files may not display as you intended, particularly if the same fonts (1) are not available on the receiver’s machine.
Users of some older Microsoft Office products can apply compatibility patches. Those of us who use the newest OpenOffice.org (orLibreOffice.org -2010) can read them. Still, fonts and formatting may vary: and there are problems with Microsoft’s formats even being incompatible with their OOXML “standard” which they forced through the international standards organization!

A Little Background

At one time there were many and various file formats. Do you remember WordPerfect? How about XyWrite, WordPro, Nota Bene, PFS:Write, Volkswriter? There were hundreds. (And woe unto one who needs to decode an old file in a proprietary format no longer used!)

Of course, through strategic marketing (i.e. monopoly practices), Microsoft eventually came to dominate the office suite software market, pushing aside even the arguably superior WordPerfect. Their formats became a de facto standard, in that competitors had to at least reasonably be able to work with them. Then being a shrewd monopolist, Microsoft saw that the best way to perpetuate their monopoly was to:

• periodically change their formats
• do not release their code, so competitors would have to play “catch up”

This aggravated many people – businesses, governments, and citizens, who found themselves forced to purchase repeated expensive upgrades, with nominal increases in utility – most of which were of no use to most users anyway. Some hung on to other vendors’ software, and dreamed: “Oh that we could have a standard format that any software could use, and share freely!” Until the rise of OpenOffice.org, there really was little alternative, though: it was just a dream.

With the rise of OpenOffice.org, a little space started to open and the idea of interoperability got some momentum. Microsoft even signed on to the bandwagon somewhat — once they realized that certain businesses and governments (particularly in the European Union) were going to demand open formats. People set to work to establish an ISO-approved (International Organization for Standardization) open file format standard, the OpenDocument Format (ODF). The intent was to have formats with open standards, so all who followed the standards could inter-operate and share files. For more information, see:

• OpenDocument Fellowship
• OpenDocument Format Alliance
• Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards

While Microsoft initially cooperated in ODF, they eventually decided that it was in their interests to advance a competing standard, OOXML. Then they could continue to add undocumented “features,” and continue the “catch up” game with competitors. They then played many tricks to force their competing “standard” through the ISO: such as recruiting selected businesses in small countries to “join” solely to vote in favor of their “standard. It was close but they eventually got their way. Ironically, the market may well have moved too fast for them, as many governments and businesses are embracing ODF! (Ironically, the implementation of the OOXML “standard” in Office 2007, does not even fully conform to that which actually was forced through!) … Can you trust this company?

More Reasons to shun even Word (DOC) formats

From Richard Stallman, We Can Put an End to Word Attachments:

Receiving Word attachments is bad for you because they can carry viruses. Sending Word attachments is bad for you, because a Word document normally includes hidden information about the author, enabling those in the know to pry into the author’s activities (maybe yours). Text that you think you deleted may still be embarrassingly present.

Sending people Word documents puts pressure on them to use Microsoft software and helps to deny them any other choice. In effect, you become a buttress of the Microsoft monopoly. This pressure is a major obstacle to the broader adoption of free software.

Suggestions

1. Send your document as ODF!

In an ideal world, you probably should be sending your documents in Open Document Format (ODF). These formats include: OpenDocument Text (ODT), OpenDocument Spreadsheet (ODS), OpenDocument Presentation (ODP); as well as OpenDocument Graphics (ODG), and OpenDocument Database (ODB).

To do this with a document generated in Microsoft Word, you may need to

• Install Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2 for Office 2007 incorporates ODF import/export filters (somewhat).)
• Install an ODF converter for Word. (This will work for older versions of Office/Word: 2000, XP, 2003.) See post: MS Word/Excel/Powerpoint ODF (OpenDocument Format) converters.

2. Try PDF for WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get)

If you want your recipient to see your document the way you do, and editing is not needed, send it as a PDF. Though a proprietary format, PDF is well documented, and free readers abound. (The latest Office has finally incorporated PDF generation, as OpenOffice.org has done for quite a time. Otherwise, there are programs to “print” PDFs, that work like a printer driver.)

3. “Just the Facts, Ma’am!” with HTML, TXT, RTF

If the words are all that matter, try a simple common format like plain text (TXT). Or if you want it a bit fancier, try HTML, or even RTF (although there are many varied implementations of that!).

To convert the file to HTML using Word is simple. Open the document, click on File, then Save As, and in the Save As Type strip box at the bottom of the
box, choose HTML Document or Web Page. Then choose Save. You can then attach the new HTML document instead of your Word document. Note that Word changes in inconsistent ways–if you see slightly different menu item names, please try them.

To convert to plain text is almost the same–instead of HTML Document, choose
Text Only or Text Document as the Save As Type. Similarly with RTF.

4. Go with the Flow: DOC, not DOCX!

Of course, you always have recourse to the “standard” Microsoft formats (without the X!) While this does not address the monopoly issues, it at least provides a document that your correspondent is more likely to be able to read faithfully. Just save it as “MS Word 97/2000/XP *DOC*” format, or however the DOC files are called. You may even choose to set this (or ODT) as your default file format.

5. Use OpenOffice.org! orLibreOffice.org! — and ODF!

This is probably best implemented when you get a new computer, but you can use OO/LO at any time – even on a machine with Word installed! But when you are buying a new computer, you have an opportunity to steer away from the Office bundles. (You pay for them in a stealthy way with bundling – just as you pay for the Windows Operating System!) Refuse the deal that’s loaded with bundled software that you don’t want. In the days when inexpensive machines perform quite well, the cost of bundles is an ever larger percentage of overall cost. … “Just say no!”

---

(1) The “C” Fonts (Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Consolas, Constantia and Corbel), introduced in Office 2007 and Vista, introduce subtle differences in formatting when the receiver does not have them – and have incompatibilities in some mathematic symbols. (This seems like another attempt to make a nuisance for non-Microsoft software!)
The previous long-used font set (“Core fonts“: Arial, Times New Roman, etc.) was initially offered openly for download by Microsoft (during a time when MS was building its market share). It was then withdrawn from MS downloads, but still legally available elsewhere.
The new “C” fonts have a more restrictive license, although there are workarounds. … If Microsoft were really worried about interoperability and making better fonts available, they would release the “C” fonts under a less restrictive license!