Monday, September 3, 2018
September is National Preparedness Month which reminds everyone to prepare themselves, their communities and families from now and throughout the year for disasters that could happen. Prepare in advance to any situation by improving your skills such as CPR and first aid.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, is encouraging people to get involved on social media by helping others understand the need to prepare for emergencies. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey left the nation devastated. About 80 percent of households impacted by Hurricane Harvey did not have flood insurance.
The theme of this year's National Preparedness Month is "Disasters Happen, Prepare Now, Learn How." FEMA has releaased a calendar of four events, one per week of the month-long event. Homeowners can take these steps to make sure they are ready for any disaster that might come their way:
Week 1. Create an emergency plan that includes signing up for emergency alerts and making contingency plans for shelter, evacuation, and family communication.
Week 2. Learn life-saving skills. CPR is a good place to start, but also be certain you know how to turn off the utilities in your home and ensure your smoke and CO detectors are properly installed and working.
Week 3. Check your insurance coverage. Once the emergency is over, appropriate and sufficient insurance will be key to getting your life back to normal, or at least on track.
Week 4. Plan financially for the possibility of a disaster. This goes beyond having a “rainy day fund” for immediate needs. Gather and organize important home, business, insurance, financial, and personal documents and keep them up-to-date and stored in a secure, water-and-fire proof location.
Tags: September , prepare , disasters , emergencies , family , community , Image
Thursday, August 30, 2018
Supporters of education should be seeing Red right now.
We need to be Red-hot angry over the decision by Ducey's Supreme Court, backed by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce, to take the Invest in Education initiative off the ballot.
We need to be more #RedforEd than ever.
We need to rid Arizona of Red/Republican politicians who vote in lockstep with their rich backers, ignoring the needs of our children. Throw The Sons Of Bitches Out! To paraphrase a slogan Republicans loved in the 60s: "Arizona: Love its children or Leave office." Don't let the Capitol door hit your asses on the way out.
If we can't campaign for Invest in Ed, then we campaign hard for candidates who promote a progressive education agenda: David Garcia for Governor, Kathy Hoffman for Superintendent of Public Instruction and all the other state and local Democrats who are facing uphill electoral battles. It doesn't matter if they were your first choice in the primary. They're your first choice now. The future of Arizona education — hell, the future of Arizona — is hanging in the balance.
Don't get sad. Get mad! And do something about it.
Tags: Arizona Chamber of Commerce , Arizona Supreme Court , Invest in Education , #RedforEd , Doug Ducey , David Garcia , Kathy Hoffman , Image
Wednesday, August 29, 2018
Now and then, he makes a show of caring for others, though compared to his own sense of self worth, he cares little for the welfare of others and even less for people in his employ, whose purpose in life, he is certain, is to make the world a better place for him to live. If someone is injured — especially if he is somehow to blame — he might have a hireling deliver a gold coin as a token of his concern. And he likes to make a public display of bestowing money on people and organizations who, unlike him, devote their lives to making the world a better place for others.
Once, when his carriage careened through the city streets and killed a child . . .
Wait. What? A carriage? A child?
Did you think I was talking about the multibillionaires walking among us who devote their lives to stepping over others to increase their wealth, then give a few million dollars to worthy causes to ease their consciences, to make them feel like they're part of the solution, not the problem? No, I was talking about "Monseigneur," a rich and powerful lord in Dickens' novel, A Tale of Two Cities.
After taking his morning chocolate, Monseigneur ordered his carriage driver to race through the streets with "furious recklessness" and "an inhuman abandonment of consideration not easy to be understood in these days."
The carriage struck a child. Monseigneur tossed the father of the dead child a gold coin while thinking, "It is extraordinary to me . . . that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children." When a man in the crowd offered wise, world-weary condolences the child's father, Monseigneur said to him, "You are a philosopher, you there," and tossed him a gold coin as well. Then he went on his way.
We can tell ourselves the ways of today's rich-as-lords plutocrats are different from those of the lords who lived before the French Revolution. Dickens, pen dipped in acid, tells his readers living 70 years later that Monseigneur's ways are "not easy to be understood in these days." We can believe the same.
Tags: WINNERS TAKE ALL: The Elite Charade of Changing the World , Anand Giridharadas , Income inequality , A Tale of Two Cities. , Image
Tuesday, August 28, 2018
The website ranks schools based on 11 criteria including graduation rate, tuition, electronic library collections, number of programs and services among others.
Onlinecolleges.com named NAU as the best online college in Arizona because of the large number of programs offered and their Personalized Learning Programs that allow students to complete classes at their own pace.
U A landed at number three because of the broad range of majors that can be completed online such as mining, cybersecurity and pediatric nursing.
Other notable schools include the University of Phoenix, ranked number four, and Arizona State University at number six.
See the full list here.
Tags: education , UA Online , online education , school , computer , laptop , rankings , UA , number three , Image
Friday, August 24, 2018
If guns are going to be put into the hands of teachers or anyone else other than school police, first, the state needs to absolve the employees of legal liability if any of them injure or kill a student or another innocent bystander.
As a retired teacher it hurts me to write about this, but it's just a simple fact. If school employees with minimal training in gun use during crisis situations are allowed to carry weapons in school, one of them is going to shoot the wrong person. It's a statistical inevitability. Police shoot innocent people, and they get far more weapons training than a school employee is likely to have. In the heat of the moment with fear and adrenaline raging, some teacher or administrator or custodian is going to choose the wrong person to aim at, or a shaky hand will jerk the gun in the wrong direction, and an innocent person will get hurt, or worse.
A school employee who shoots the wrong person will live with the mistake for the rest of his or her life, as will the family of the person accidentally injured or killed. But should the employee be held responsible — sued by the injured family or prosecuted in a court of law? The answer is no. The employee should be dealt with far more leniently than a law enforcement officer whose job it is to deal with situations involving violence and guns. People who work at school are trained to teach or administrate or perform other school-related duties, not to handle fire arms in a shooting situation.
Tags: Guns in schools , education , politics , safety , children , schools , teachers , legislation , Image
Wednesday, August 22, 2018
The college offers three types of courses: UA Student-Community Courses, Lifelong Learning Seminars, and Professional Development Courses.
UA Student-Community Courses allows for you to experience the same lectures as UA students, only you don’t need to worry about passing any tests. And at the same time, you get to meet and discuss class topics with UA students. Professors involve professor and linguist Noam Chomsky! Tuition costs $250.
Lifelong Learning Seminars offer a wide variety of topics, including the history of Tucson cinema, photography basics, and more. These classes are both on-campus and around Tucson. Tuition ranges from $90 to 120.
Professional Development Courses teach you career skills and allow you to work with Tucson professionals. Currently, the only planned class is for building a social media strategy. Tuition costs $240.
Registration details can be found at communityclassroom.arizona.edu
Tags: University of Arizona , community classrooms , lifelong learning , Image
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
In a recent BradBlog post, Friedman wrote about the latest from the hackers convention, DEF CON, in Las Vegas. If this doesn't scare you, you're not paying attention (or you figure vote tampering is going to help your side). He also has a podcast you can link to with more detailed information and interviews.
[W]e head straight out to Las Vegas for today's BradCast, where the 26th annual hackers convention, DEF CON, held its 2nd annual Vote Hacking Village.
After every voting system on display at last year's event was hacked within minutes by conference attendees, organizers tried to make it a bit more difficult this year. They made unverifiable electronic voting systems, optical-scan paper ballot tabulators and electronic pollbooks from a number of companies —- almost all of which will be in wide use across the country once again for this November's crucial midterms —- available for investigation and penetration. Once again, the hackers in attendance made short order of pretty much all of them.
Stunning vulnerabilities were discovered, including some that officials have known about (and ignored or tried to keep secret for years) while others were revealed for the first time. Things like Chinese pop song files were found on one system used in actual elections recently, along with a host of other disturbing findings, which we summarize today.
Tags: Election integrity , Brad Friedman , DEF CON , Voting machines , Image
New research by Assistant Professor of Marketing at Eller, Caleb Warren and his research partner Gina Mohr, Associate Professor of Marketing at Colorado State University, indicates that consuming brands ironically is a way to secretly signal our identity and beliefs to those that know us.
The researchers define this phenomenon as ironic consumption. The term includes using a brand or adopting a behavior as an attempt to signal identity, trait or belief opposite from their perceived conventional meaning of the product, according to a UA press release.
"Throughout history, consumers have re-appropriated products to make a statement," Warren said in the press release. "For example, trucker hats were at one time low-status products and originally came into fashion through rural workers. They've since been revalued by young urban consumers."
Ironic consumption allows for an in-group and and out-group. Those who get it, and those who don't.
Another way that ironic consumption is used is to signal status. Researchers use the example of Bruno Mars eating at a Waffle House. It wouldn't be ironic if the star ate at a mid-level restaurant, but the contrast of an extremely rich celebrity and the humble walls of a Waffle House are where the irony comes in.
Warren and Mohr also found that ironic consumption can offend some audiences, for example those who like Justin Bieber might be offended at a hard rocker wearing Bieber's shirt in a way that makes fun of him or his fans.
Those that are wearing a Bieber shirt ironically, however, probably like the idea of offending his fans. It's all part of the irony.
Ironic consumption can also safeguard those who might actually like the subject of their consumption, researchers found.
"Consuming something ironically is also a security measure," Warren said in the press release. "No one wants to be mocked for watching, say, Jersey Shore. But if you so do with a behavior that suggests you're watching ironically, you won't suffer any stigma related to the product."
So, to those hard rockers out there in Bieber shirts, is it too late now to say sorry?
Why is this relevant to professors of marketing you ask? Ironic consumption can often lead to a new and desired brand identity. According to the press release, Pabst Blue Ribbon is an example of a product with an uncool legacy and known to be not the best product, that through ironic consumption has become the chosen brew of many-a-hipster.
The newest ironic consumption trend? Remember when big white ugly sneakers used to be just for dads? Think again.
Tags: UA , Research , ironic , hipsters , revival trucker hats , PBR , Justin Bieber , Image
Monday, August 20, 2018
The new batch is a smart one, according to UA, with seven percent more students entering with a 4.0 grade point average and 16 percent more students with high GPA's between 3.75 and 3.99.
"We are honored to welcome all of our new and returning Wildcats to campus," said Kasey Urquidez, vice president of enrollment management and student affairs advancement and dean of undergraduate admissions at the UA. "We are thrilled with the increase in applications and the number of students who have selected the UA as their college of choice."
Not only are there more A+ students at the UA this year, the number of applications also went up by 20 percent, with the percentage of freshman students from diverse backgrounds at 45 percent.
"The start of the school year brings a unique feeling of excitement to campus," said UA President Robert C. Robbins in a UA press release. "We have a very strong class of students coming to the UA this fall, and many of them are first-generation students from diverse backgrounds. Along with many others here at the UA, I can't wait to see what this year's new students will achieve during their academic careers."
Along side the new freshmen, around 2,300 transfer students enrolled this semester, with 53 percent of them being first-generation students and many of them online students.
"We're meeting our students where they are – offering opportunities to be a Wildcat from all over the world or down the street from the comfort of their home," Urquidez said in a UA press release.
The on-campus, online and even international student population has grown this year, now with students from over 100 countries.
"The incoming international freshman class is up 36 percent – in stark contrast to national trends – reflecting the UA's commitment to bold new recruiting strategies and growing reputation as a global university," said Brent White, dean of global campuses and interim vice provost for global affairs.
The most popular majors for incoming freshmen are:
- Pre-business
- Pre-Physiology
- Engineering
- Biology
- Pre-Computer Science
New degree options that have been added this semester are:
- Applied Humanities
- Food Studies
- Statistics and Data Science
- Food Safety
- Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences
- Nutrition and Food Systems
- Personal and Family Financial Planning
- Pharmaceutical Sciences
- Statistics and Data Science
- Deaf Studies
- Mild Moderate Disabilities
- Rehabilitation Studies and Services
An official count of all students enrolled at UA for the 2018-19 school year will be released on Sept. 10.
Tags: UA , University of Arizona , first day of school , by the numbers , increase , students , smart , international , transfer , freshmen , Image
Friday, August 17, 2018
Banner - UMC Tucson was named number one in Tucson, number three in all of Arizona and ranked nationally in three specialties: number 36 for gynecology, 49th for pulmonology and 50th for nephrology.
"We are honored that U.S. News has recognized the hard work and dedication of our caregivers, educators and researchers at Banner – University Medical Center Tucson. Our team's continuing commitment to our patients and our community is unparalleled," said Sarah Frost, interim CEO of Banner – University Medical Center Tucson.
This year U.S. News and World Report ranked more than 4,500 medical centers across the country, with 25 specialties.
Banner - UMC Phoenix ranked number two nationally, and placed among the best in five categories including geriatrics, pulmonology, nephrology, cardiology and heart surgery, and neurology and neurosurgery.
"To be among the medical centers recognized in five specialty areas is a significant accomplishment, and is a testament to the work that our team does every day in support of building the relationship between our college and Banner," said Guy Reed, dean of the UA College of Medicine – Phoenix. "Let us continue to raise the bar for our students and patients, the community, and one another."
Read the full report here.
Tags: Banner - UMC , hospital , ranking , healthcare , education , UA , Tucson , Phoenix , Image
