david mackay: do the arithmetic

John McCarthy: He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense. (Progress and its Sustainability)

I'd forgotten a lot of my basic physics, so here is a refresher.

Power is the rate of energy conversion, or, the rate of doing work. This applies to both mechanical power, measured in joules / sec and electrical power, measured in watts

Work is done when a force is moved through a distance (W=F*D)

Mechanical force = mass * acceleration, the UNITS are kg.metre/sec/sec or Newtons
Mechanical work = force * distance, the UNITS are newton.metres or N.m or Joules
Mechanical power is work divided by time, or, Work / time, the UNITS are N.m /s or Joules / sec

Electrical power is measured in Watts. 1 Watt = 1 Joule / sec. A watt is also a volt.amp. Watts= Volts * amps

To obtain electrical energy then multiply the power * time. The UNITS here could be joules or watt.seconds. The normal units for larger amounts of electrical energy are KW.hrs. To convert watts to kilowatts divide by 1000, to convert seconds to hours divide by 3600 or 60*60.

We need to have an internalised way of having a feel for these values. A joule is the energy or work required to lift a small apple one meter straight up. If you perform that action in one second then that is equivalent to a watt or joule/sec of electrical power.

The small apple weighs 0.1 kg
The acceleration caused by the earth's gravity is roughly 10 m/sec/sec (9.8 m/s/s more accurately)
The distance we move the apple through is 1 metre
Work = force * distance
Work = mass * acceleration * distance
Work = 0.1 * 10 * 1
Work = 1 joule or 1 Newton.metre or 1 kg. metre ^2 / sec ^2, where ^2 means squared

Some other joule practical examples at the wikipedia joule page

A 40 watt incandescent light bulb produces forty joules of energy per second or the equivalent of lifting 4kg of apples 1 metre in one second. Fluorescent or LED lights achieve a similar effect with much less energy.

How much energy does a 40 watt incandescent light bulb use in one day?
40 * 24 / 1000 = 1 KW.hr energy used in one day

How much energy does the average person in an industrialised country use? The figures here are for the UK

Answer: The equivalent of 125 of these light bulbs running all the time

How many wind turbines would it require to meet the energy needs of everyone in the UK?
Answer = 600,000, which would cover half of the UK. The UK currently has 2408 wind turbines

How many nuclear power stations would it require to meet the energy needs of everyone in the UK?
Answer = 300. The UK currently has 10 nuclear power stations.

Here is a video from David MacKay illustrating the need to do the arithmetic. Irrespective of whether you are an alarmist, denier or somewhere in between you still need to do the arithmetic and basic physics to intelligently discuss these issues:

David MacKay is the author of Sustainable energy - without the hot air. He has recently been appointed the UK's Department of Energy and Climate Change Chief Scientific Advisor.

thoughts on the nuclear debate

Debate: "Should we consider Nuclear Power as a response to climate change?"

Affirmative:

Professor Barry Brook, Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change, University of Adelaide, and author of the blog Brave New Climate

Tom Blees, President, Science Council for Global Initiatives and author of the book "Prescription for the Planet."

For the Negative:

David Noonan, Australian Conservation Foundation

Dr Mark Diesendorf, Deputy Director, Institute of Environmental Studies, University of New South Wales".

I bought Tom Blee's book Prescription for the Planet. Tom was a very effective presenter due to his extensive research and personal contact with a wide range of people deeply involved in these issues allowed him to communicate telling and interesting anecdotes - and he has a wicked sense of humour, which was much needed on the night

The majority of the audience was anti nuclear (2/3rds or 3/4) but thanks to the work done by Barry Brook on his blog, Brave New Climate, there was a significant pro nuclear presence

Mark Diesendorf was energetically aggressive in his attack on nuclear power as an "idealistic fantasy". He argued that renewables could completely replace fossil fuels by 2030 and presented a slide showing the growth of various renewables illustrating how this could be done.

I felt this slide was dodgy but didn't know enough to refute it. Mark also made a big issue of his expertise and criticised Barry for pronouncing outside his field of primary expertise.

Aspects of this slide were challenged by Barry Brook. How could geothermal grow so quickly when on another slide Mark had shown geothermal at the R&D stage in Australia and that new technologies took 40 years or so to reach large scale commercial stage. Mark had used this to argue that IFR (Integral Fast Reactors) was pie in the sky, so Barry's counter was quite effective.

There was other to and fro along these lines, some of it amusing. Barry pointed out that renewables only made up 1% of the world's energy. Mark responded that it was unfair to take a world average because some European countries had a much higher percentage. But Mark had earlier criticised Tom Blee's example of ineffective solar panels in Germany as "cherry picking" because Germany had a cold climate. This sort of exchange confirmed my belief that you need to have a firm grasp of the arithmetic to engage intelligently in this debate. I've read this page (Renewable energy cannot sustain an energy intensive society) of Barry's site and downloaded Ted Trainer's pdf from that page to improve my own knowledge here

David and Mark were unreasonably dogmatic in their anti-IFR stance. The issue of urgency was used in an irrational way, given the reality of the failure in Copenhagen and the certainty of developing countries like China and India to continue using massive amounts of fossil fuels. Even if IFR does take 50 years to develop on a large scale (in itself debatable) then that is not a reason not to develop it. There is a can do and a can't do mentality and wrt IFR their attitude was totally can't do on technical grounds alone. They want a total roadblock on nuclear power. They spent quite a bit of time on this, irrespective of their other objections.

Barry took a realistic economic approach that coal would not be replaced by alternatives until a cheaper alternative emerged - and the best shot for that was nuclear.

Mark disputed that but admitted that his renewable futures would be more expensive. For me this was the real "idealistic fantasy", his repeated statement along the lines that people power would convince governments to change.

The other main objection from the anti-nuclear side was proliferation. What emerged here was that IFR reactors do not produce weapons grade plutonium and there are other more effective means of producing weapons grade plutonium, such as high-speed centrifuge technology. I felt the pro-nuclear side was on shakier ground here since more IFR reactors will lead to more transport around the world of weapons grade plutonium (as a start up fuel) and so the probability of it falling into the hands of terrorists will probably increase.

Mark said that nuclear power was 14% of the world's electricity production and declining. Barry offered a bet that the nuclear percentage would increase but Mark declined to accept it. Good move, Barry!

So, it boiled down to who was living in the "real world" and who was living in "fantasy world"

scratch challenges update

Numbers 12-14 are new. Scratch is a free download

1) Use the Letter shapes to write your first name on the page. Then introduce some special effects such as making the letters wobble and change their appearance.

2) Point, click and move
Make an object both point and glide towards the mouse position when you click on the stage
Hint: Motion > point towards
Hint: Sensing > mouse down?

3) Make Dan or Anjuli or Cassy or ballerina dance to a beat, using all of their dance shapes. Include a suitable background that changes colours as the lights flash.

4a) Make two animals have a forwards and backwards conversation
Hint: Use broadcast, (ask for help if you don’t know how broadcast works)
4b) Make it an interesting conversation with each animal speaking at least 3 times and making gestures too

5) Make a sprite gradually grow in size and then shrink

6) Make 2 different balls move around on the stage
a) the first ball moves in straight lines but bounces randomly whenever it hits the edge
b) the second moves randomly, gliding from one position to a new random position continually

7a) One sprite chases another sprite around the stage. The first sprite moves in straight line but bounces off the edge randomly. The chasing sprite chases the first sprite but is moving slower.
b) Extension – if the chasing sprite catches the other sprite then it says something sensible and makes a suitable sound

8a) Play all the different drum sounds automatically
Hint: create a variable for the drum number
b) Extension – keep recycling through all the drum sounds automatically

9a) Count down on a timer. A rocket takes off when you reach zero
Hint: Use the number icons in the letters folder
9b) Your rocket has pulsating exhaust and disappears at the top of the screen

10) Add, multiply or subtract two variable numbers
Hint: Just to do addition only you will need 4 variables: firstNum, secondNum, answer (computer calculated) and myAnswer (human calculated)

11) Variable coloured squares
a) Write a script that can draw a square of any size
Hint: Make a variable for the side length
b) Use the variable square script to draw a series of square with variable sides, with a single click
c) Now add variable pen colour and pen shade to the variable square script and use it to draw a variety of different coloured squares, with a single click

12) Draw lines of random thickness in random directions with random colours. The pen must be lifted up and moved for each new line.
Hint: pen group contains set pen color, set pen size, pen up, pen down
Hint: colours range across the spectrum (ROY G BIV) starting with red = 0. There are about 190 colours in total and you need to display them all!

13A) Make a race
a) choose two suitable sprites, they must have at least 2 costumes to simulate motion
b) the sprites move at random speeds, you can’t predict the winner
c) make a finish line, using a new sprite is best
d) suitable background music
e) when the winner crosses the finish line it announces that it won
f) reset scripts to start again

13B) Extension: Make it a multi-lap race, the number of laps can vary
g) make a variable to set and count the laps (use this on just one of the sprites otherwise you will be counting the laps twice)
h) use “x position” with an if tile rather than “if on edge bounce” to manage the turning and lap increase value
i) hide the finish line so that it only appears for the final lap

14A) Play the scales on a piano
a) Check out the sound > play note tile
b) Teacher has supplies a graphic of a keyboard. Import it to your scratch project.
c) Program the computer keyboard so that it plays a series of notes on the piano keyboard
d) As the notes are played alter the keyboard graphic to make it appear they are being pressed and they revert back to blank when the key is released
e) Add some suitable background graphics

14B) Extension
f) As the notes are played a sprite dances to the tune created by the notes, ie. each note triggers a particular movement
g) The names of the notes are spoken by a new sprite as they are played
h) Find a way to play ALL the notes on the keyboard

We don't deserve this, Julia Gillard

source of graphic

OK, I spent 6 years or so teaching at a School in one of the most disadvantaged socio-economic areas in metropolitan Australia. And so I can empathise strongly with how teachers at that school would feel about the new Australian government MySchool site when they see how their low NAPLAN results (Paralowie) are prominently in RED when compared with ALL schools , even though the similar so called like school results are displayed in far lighter shades.

Just let me say that Paralowie had the most enlightened administration and the most creative teachers I have ever had the privilege to work with. Teachers who understood that the main source of educational disadvantage was socio-economic and worked very hard to turn things around for as many students as they could.

And guess what. It will be the same long after Julia Gilliard has left politics and has retired on her parliamentary pension to some upper class suburb somewhere.

Further reading: League Tables Increase Social Segregation and Inequality by Trevor Cobbold, pdf

Previous blog: sbs-insight: should-schools-test-results-be-made-public

Previous article:
OPTIMISM AND REALITY IN DISADVANTAGED SCHOOLS

More temperate but well researched blogs, even though I have no idea where Darcy gets the thought that Gillard and Rudd are well intentioned:
MySchool: Part I
MySchool: Part II

is it nuclear or newclear?

I like this approach to the global warming climate debate:

1) Rapid human economic development is good (not argued here) and inevitable (you aren't going to stop China, India etc. from developing)

2) The only valid alternative to fossil fuels for our energy needs is nuclear power. This is really a matter of doing the arithmetic. According to The Integral Fast Reactor – Summary for Policy Makers (IFR Summary article) , which is written from the POV of keeping CO2 under 450ppm, then we will need to produce 1 GWe per day of new clean power every single day for the next 25 years.

3) The integral fast reactor (IFR) is the safest and most efficient form of nuclear power about. It was invented by Charles Till in 1965 (Plentiful Energy and the IFR Story) who led a team which produced a small (non commercial) fast reactor which ran for 30 years without incident. Unfortunately, this program was shut down by Bill Clinton’s administration in 1994 for political reasons. In Congress, the main argument against (by John Kerry) was civilian nuclear proliferation (which I suppose is a valid concern today as well – although the end product of IFR is not suitable for weapon production I’m less certain about the fuel inputs, still researching)

4) So if you are a climate alarmist then you should support IFR (as James Hansen does, see Science Council for Global Initiatives)

5) If you are not an alarmist but support future human development then you should also support IFR, not so urgently but essential for the future.

There is a debate happening in Adelaide, Australia, this Friday presented by The Australian Solar Energy Society, Sustainable Populations Australia and The Zero Carbon Network, will see a debate on “Should we consider Nuclear Power as a response to climate change?” with Mark Diesendorf and Helen Caldicott for the negative and Barry Brook and Tom Blees for the affirmitive (The Nuclear Debate). I've booked a seat.

For more information about IFR do some reading from this page of Barry Brooks blog, Brave New Climate.

Tom Blees video, part 2 of 3:

"The poor are a goldmine"

Fattest hand is first in the till

Noel Pearson is a great, fearless writer who combines deep analysis with scathing, excoriating description. By now much of his analysis of how passive welfare makes things worse for aboriginal people has filtered through to mainstream consciousness. In the above article he elaborates on a misunderstood aspect of his analysis. The aboriginal industry is made up of people who benefit before any aboriginal person benefits. Although some elements of welfare are essential it can easily reach a point where the helpers are taking responsibility out of the hands of the recipients. Once this becomes a problem it is hard to undo because many of the helpers would then become unemployed. Pearson is much more in touch with this than I am and far more scathing.

After quoting African-American economist Thomas Sowell, "The poor are a goldmine", Noel Pearson goes onto illustrate how this aphorism applies to indigenous Australians:

The leviathan of government bureaucracies make the payday lenders, the drug dealers and sly grog sellers pale in comparison with their commandeering of the income streams that are nominally allocated to the indigenous poor on the ground ...

So the first problem is an age-old one of ever-pullulating bureaucracies: like maggots engorged on a roadside carcass, whenever there is a new budget line the frontline departments of government serve themselves first. This is the real Aboriginal industry ...

The second form of welfare - passive service delivery - was not understood at the time of our critique, and has little public policy understanding even today. When we say that a large part of our welfare problem is government service delivery, people do not understand what we mean. After all, service delivery is supposed to be what is needed. Aboriginal disadvantage supposedly needs to be fixed by more comprehensive and more co-ordinated service delivery.

This is how you end up with 400 service providers for just 1200 people.

Our point that indigenous passivity is very much a consequence of government service delivery has been completely lost to the debate on indigenous policy.

The problem is that essential and beneficial government service delivery is mixed up with a vast panoply of services that displaced Aboriginal individuals, families and communities taking up their own responsibilities.

What my opponents and sceptics from the Left have failed to understand is that when we talk about disempowerment being the singular and devastating feature of Aboriginal Australia, we mean that our people have had their responsibilities taken away from us. Responsibility is power. If we want our people to be empowered, then we need to take back the responsibilities that the welfare state has stripped away from us.

fascist regimes are undermined by the internet

I may no longer be able to say that Google does some evil.

XIAO QIANG, director, China Internet Project, University of California at Berkeley

XIAO QIANG: Well, this -- we really should put this context of the Google event in a larger context, which is, it's not Google vs. China. It's more Internet vs. the authoritarian regime, the Chinese authoritarian regime, because, fundamentally, the Internet is an enabler.

It's empowering people the capacity to organize information, to effectively use information, and also to work together, collaboration, and even mobilize collective actions.

From those point of view, Google's services and products are just, for those leading services, empowering people to do so. And the Chinese government fundamentally cannot live in peace with such empowering factor of technology. Therefore, they cannot live in peace with Google, period.

So, when the Internet is getting larger and larger in China, the Internet users are more and more politically active, and the political speeches have become more and more proactive, then the government has to intensify its censorship measure higher and higher degree, and then to the point that the company like a Google cannot take it any more. So, this is fundamentally an issue of China's government vs. Internet.

Whether Google is there or not, the story will continue.
- Google's Threats to Leave China Renew Censorship Concerns

The offical Google blog announcement: A New Approach to China

Ethan Zuckerman has a more detailed analysis: Four possible explanations for Google's big China move:

• Google decided to stop being evil
• Google retreated from a very tough market
• Google abandoned Chinese users
• Google is about to join the front lines of the anticensorship wars (very interesting)

ignoble award in economics

Real World Economics Review blog is running a competition for the ignoble award in economics:

With other learned professions entrusted with public confidence, such as medicine and engineering, it is inconceivable that their professional bodies would not at the very least censure members who had successfully persuaded governments and public opinion to ignore elementary safety measures, so causing epidemics and widespread building collapses.

To date, however, the world’s major economics associations have declined to censure the major facilitators of the GFC or even to publicly identify them. This silence, this indifference to causing human suffering, constitutes grave moral failure. It also gives license to economists to continue to indulge in axiom-happy behaviour. Nor has the economics establishment offered recognition to those economists who were not taken in by fads and fashion and whose competence, if listened to, would have prevented the collapse …

The nomination, evidence and final winners procedures are explained at the site.

Click here to see recent nominations with some comments / reasons. So far, nominations include Greenspan, Bernanke, Summers, Prescott, Fama, Stigler, Friedman, Scholes, Geithner, Sachs, Krugman, Samuelson, Stiglitz and Gordon Brown / Ed Balls

Real World Economics Review is a communal blog for alternative economists. See their About page for more detail, including pdf downloads of papers to recent journals.

the aftermath of financial crisis

What we can expect on average from historical precedents of severe financial crises:

• Real Housing Prices will drop by 35.5% and take 6 years to recover
• Equity Prices will drop by 55.9% and take 3.4 years to recover
• Unemployment will increase by 7% and take 4.8 years to recover
• GDP will drop by 9.3% and take 1.9 years to recover
• Real public debt will increase by 86% over 3 years

This is based on a historical study of 22 major banking crises in different countries for which data was available

Most of the crises in the study group were regional (with the exception of the Great Depression which was included). So the current crisis may be worse in this respect:

The global nature of the crisis will make it far more difficult for many countries to grow their way out through higher exports, or to smooth the consumption effects through foreign borrowing. In such circumstances, the recent lull in sovereign defaults is likely to come to an end. As Reinhart and Rogoff (2008b) highlight, defaults in emerging market economies tend to rise sharply when many countries are simultaneously experiencing domestic banking crises.

Source: The Aftermath of Financial Crisis by Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff

steve keen's 2010 prediction for the economy

Steve Keen's concludes his 2009 retrospective with a prediction for 2010:

My expectation is that, some time during 2010, the disconnect between the financial markets’ euphoric expectations and the hard reality of a deleveraging private sector will bring the optimism of both “born again Keynesian” neoclassical economists and the markets to an end. Growth will not resume once the stimulus packages are removed, since deleveraging will then assert itself in the absence of government stimulus. Falling debt will subtract from growth, as it once added to it, and unemployment will start to rise again.

I expect that governments will react to this as they did in 2009–by turning on the stimulus packages once more, while continuing to ignore the private debt levels that caused the crisis in the first place. They will “turn Japanese”, to coin a phrase–since this is the same thing the Japanese government has been doing for two decades since its Bubble Economy burst at the end of 1989.

This process may repeat itself two or three times before serious attention is finally turned to the Ponzi-dominated financial sector’s parasitic impact on the real economy. But for now, the parasites are clearly still in control of the host

Unique visitors to Keen's blog have increased from 15,000 to 50,000 per month during 2009. I'm one of the new ones.

Steve Keen is a prolific Australian economics writer and publishes most of his material, including his university course, on line, see Debunking Economics. He supports a Post Keynesian or Minsky analysis of the economy, that capitalism is a fragile system in its internal dynamic (Financial Instability). One aspect of Keen's work is that he connects Post Keynesian analysis to Marxist dialectical philosophy, arguing continuity between the ideas of Marx and the ideas of Minsky (The Minsky Thesis: Keynesian or Marxian?).

I have bought and am reading the mobipocket eBook version of Keen's book and have recently ordered a couple of books by Hyman Minsky (1919-1996), that have been recently republished in the light of the crisis:

• John Maynard Keynes: Hyman Minsky's influential reinterpretation of the Keynesian revolution
• Stabilizing an Unstable Economy

Goethe quote

Every school of thought is like a man who has talked to himself for a hundred years and is delighted with his own mind, however stupid it may be.
(J.W. Goethe, 1817, Principles of Natural Science)

From the Schools of Thought page of the History of Economic Thought site. I think that site is a very good starting point for serious economic study.

update (25th December): Here is a counter balancing quote, from the HET introduction page, also from Goethe

Somebody says: "Of no school I am part,
Never to living master lost my heart,
Nor any more can I be said
To have learned anything from the dead."
That statement - subject to appeal -
Means "I'm a self-made imbecile."
(J.W. Goethe, Den Originalen, 1812)

Paul Samuelson developed Frankenstein

Economist Paul Samuelson has just died (age 94) so there was some coverage about him on the PBS NewsHour (my favourite news source) tonight.

As part of my economic study I am currently acquiring an overview of the mainstream neo-classical schools (they argue amongst each other). I'm impressed by the History of Economic Thought website. They have a summary of the various schools of thought which is more coherent than wikipedia. Wikipedia is not bad but tends to be more muddled and padded than the HET site.

Anyway, according to the NewsHour interview with David Warsh, Paul Samuelson was one of the four most influential economists of the 20th Century, the others being John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman and Kenneth Arrow. (Late Economist Samuelson Bridged Math, Money). From what I've read Samuelson was very good at developing mathematical arguments to update and refine Keynesian type government interventions into the economy.

Given his importance what he said about the current crisis, at the start of it, is interesting:

PAUL SAMUELSON: I'm really very realistic about the mess that we are in. People compare it with the Great Depression. But the Wall Street shenanigans this time are much worse. And people like me, who lived through the Great Depression, as a young, budding, kind of bright economist, are in great demand because the other people don't have a clue as -- as to what this kind of situation is.

PAUL SOLMAN: Well, what did Wall Street do this time that it didn't do last time?

PAUL SAMUELSON: This is the first time ever that this happened after the -- and I have to use my words very carefully -- fiendish, Frankenstein monsters of financial engineering had been created, a lot of them at MIT, some of them by people like me.

And these are marvelous things which can be used to spread risks rationally, and, in that sense, reduce riskiness. But the Frankenstein part of the story is that they also are marvelous things, Samson-like, to blind you. You don't know what you're doing. All transparency disappears. What's happened this last eight years is an absolutely unnecessary thing.

neither an alarmist nor denier be

Richard Burton once when approached by a beggar quoted Shakespeare:

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be -Shakespeare"

The beggar responded:

"Get fucked - Henry Miller"

That's pretty close to how I feel about the global warming pretend debate.

James Hansen sounded convincing on Lateline when interviewed by fellow alarmist Tony Jones. When I watch a seemingly reasonable and well researched scientist like Hansen I start to think who am I to question this?

But then when I read a counter argument by Richard Lindzen, a qualified environmentalist, (The Climate Science isn't Settled) then I wonder why the ABC takes the easy path of having an alarmist interview another alarmist. Why don't they set up a real debate between Hansen and Lindzen?

The ABC has already decided on the truth and present us with a carefully massaged version

It is still best to be neither an alarmist nor a denier. I would describe myself as a lukewarmist. Perhaps I should set up a political party but lacking the stridency and certainty of those who are sure it would not receive many votes.

Lindzen:

The notion that complex climate "catastrophes" are simply a matter of the response of a single number, GATA, to a single forcing, CO2 (or solar forcing for that matter), represents a gigantic step backward in the science of climate. Many disasters associated with warming are simply normal occurrences whose existence is falsely claimed to be evidence of warming. And all these examples involve phenomena that are dependent on the confluence of many factors.

Our perceptions of nature are similarly dragged back centuries so that the normal occasional occurrences of open water in summer over the North Pole, droughts, floods, hurricanes, sea-level variations, etc. are all taken as omens, portending doom due to our sinful ways (as epitomized by our carbon footprint). All of these phenomena depend on the confluence of multiple factors as well
- The Climate Science isn't Settled

Lindzen's argument conforms with my belief that sustainability, although in some cases maybe a desirable goal, is not a possible goal. There is no ideal climate for the earth, there has never been any long term stability in the earth's climate or anything else for that matter. The idea that we can achieve this is ludicrous.

Previous blogs about this:
the case for unsustainability
the left and right of global warming
the problem of too much bullshit

Chicago 10

This has been out for a couple of years but I only saw it recently on late night SBS documentaries.

It's a very smooth rendition of the Chicago 1968 Hoffman / Yippie / Black Panthers (Bobby Seale) trial

1968. I lived through that time and the anti Vietnam war street demos. It was a historical hinge point. This documentary perturbed me because I lived through somewhat similar events in Australia - the sometimes violent protests, trails and gaoling of draft resistors and demonstrators. I feel like saying you have to see this documentary to understand those times. Maybe that's true, I think it is, but if you didn't experience things like this then maybe you wouldn't understand it anyway - because 1968 was such a radical break from the past. If you don't understand what life was like before 1968 then is it possible to understand 1968?

On the one hand NLF flags in the Courtroom and on the hill. On the other hand the pro war voices trying to depict hippies as commies or stooges, which just didn't gel.

I've seen previous versions of the Chicago trial. The previous versions had a different focus - mainly on the gagging and chaining of Bobby Seale by Judge Hoffman.

This one was different and possibly overall more accurate. It presented the Yippies as the main players of protest and Bobby Seale as almost an afterthought. There was new footage in there for me. Ginsberg's bad poetry, Norman Mailer shots and much more.

Two forms of protest or "rage against the machine". The Yippies with fun and drugs, the Panthers far more serious and fight fire with fire. Back then I read their literature avidly trying to work out where I stood. Cleaver: Soul on Ice; Jerry Rubin: Do It! In the end I agreed with Timothy O'Leary (the LSD professor) when years later he was asked why he left the hippies, replied: "I never really like the hippies anyway" LOL

The judge makes all these terrible errors - like chaining up and gagging Seale who was demanding his constitutional right to defend himself. Everything operates on a more subtle level today

I think the struggle goes on but the forms of struggle vary immensely over the decades. The Yippies and the Panthers were very romantic and exciting and I can't escape those feeling when I watch that old footage.

my fake farewell speech

Due to various push and pull factors (one of them being the need to study political economy thoroughly) I am planning to take a whole year's leave in 2010. This got me thinking as to what I would say to my teaching colleagues at the inevitable staff meeting if I was retiring. I've watched all those other teachers retire and now it's (almost) my turn. Since I'm not I won't get to give the speech but here's a draft of some thoughts about it (short version). btw I'm a secondary teacher.

The life of the soldier has been described as long periods of boredom interspersed with short periods of terror.

aside: maybe the life of some students is more like that of the soldier than the teacher but these days more accurately described as long periods of boredom (as in "this is boring") punctuated by long periods of playing with their mobile phones. If I was to resort to uncharacteristic sarcasm then I might describe them as the you-twit-face generation (thanks rob!), the achievement of dynamic overlap of you tube, twitter and facebook.

At any rate, for the last cottage industry, teaching is the most contradictory of professions

There is:

• magic - the magic of a great lesson
• the almost magic of the almost great lesson - where after describing the wonders of the Hubble telescope penetrating the mysteries of the Universe, a student comes out the front, you think you have inspired him to ask a deep question, but instead s/he says "Can I go to the toilet?"
• discovery - the continual discovery of new learning ideas and new student personalities, in the final analysis teaching is a great privilege
• the need for courage - unexpected confrontation, sometimes serious, can and do strike from a clear blue sky. I didn't realise that Nietzsche was a teacher in a Disadvantaged school until I saw this quote: "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger"
• frustration and aggravation - aka the Department and their representatives
• attrition - in the end it wears you down

On the magic days it's the best job in the world. On the need for courage days you wonder why the hell am I doing this

Best story. At the end of an excursion one teacher explained to me that when she went to primary school in her class there was a cupboard labelled "teachers cupboard". She thought that at the end of the school day after the kids had gone home that the teacher got into her cupboard and waited there until the next day!

Best compliment. One student once nicknamed me the detective. I asked why and he said, "You never give up on a case"

(in house anecdotes left out)

Marx is thorough

It has been sitting on my bookshelf for 30+ years. Because of the economic crisis (not yet over), I finally got around to reading Part One of Capital by Karl Marx. It took me many hours. It demands the slow, deep thinking mode.

The thoroughness of Marx is very impressive. I think I now understand what an everyday commonplace commodity is and so I see the world in a different way. That's one thing that good thinkers do; they make you see the commonplace in a completely different way.

I hope it doesn't take others 30+ years to get around to it.

Dan Willingham's book

I was impressed earlier by some you tube videos and articles by Dan Willingham (some summaries here) so when I discovered that he had written a book I bought it

Why Don't Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions about how the Mind Works and What it means for the Classroom (2009)

From the Introduction:

Repetition is good for learning but terrible for motivation

This quote and book is a timely reminder for me that teaching is a complex balancing act, there is no one true way. Also, the claim that we have learnt "more about how the mind works in the last twenty-five years than we did in the previous twenty-five hundred" is credible. And Willingham makes a brave attempt of translating these discoveries into worthwhile "Implications for the Classroom" in every chapter.

So far I've read two chapters and skimmed the others. Below is a thumbnail of what each chapter discusses.

Chapter 1: Although we are naturally curious our minds aren't naturally good at thinking and often avoid thinking

Chapter 2: Background factual knowledge is essential for skill development (Content precedes process)

Chapter 3: Memory is the residue of thought. If we want students to remember things then work out a way for them to think about those things.

Chapter 4: Abstraction is hard. We understand new things in the context of things we already know and most of what we know is concrete knowledge.

Chapter 5: Expertise. Extended practice is essential to become proficient at a mental task.

Chapter 6: There are no short cuts to teaching expertise. Cognition early in training is very different from cognition later in training.

Chapter 7: Learning Styles. Children are more alike than different in terms of how they think and learn.

Chapter 8: Slow learners. Children do differ in intelligence but intelligence can be changed through sustained hard work.

Chapter 9: Teachers. Teaching like any complex cognitive skill must be practiced to be improved.

The book title, Why Don't Students Like School?, is a little sensationalist. This book does contribute significantly to the answer of that question but the main point is better expressed in the long subtitle.

radical hope: education and equality in australia

Radical Hope: Education and Equality in Australia
It's in the latest Quarterly Essay ($17). It's over 100pp, they have just one big essay per issue.

It's a must read IMO. I'll try to explain why.

The genres are: education - learning theory - politics - social class - philosophy(dialectics) - disadvantage - indigenous australians - history

Although Pearson is an aboriginal activist and theoretician this is more an essay about social class than an essay about culture and race issues. Pearson does discuss the latter at some length and his essay is much enriched through that discussion, but the crunch issues focus around social class.

From a young age I've had the belief that schools and school systems are well constructed shipwrecks designed to select the best swimmers. That education is a subset of social class and that education alone can not overthrow social class.

The purpose of education is production and reproduction. Production is churning out the next generation of capitalists and workers, from elite to low skilled jobs. Reproduction is the reproduction and legitimisation of our existing class structure.

This truth is reflected in public Schools by techniques for managing but not educating the bottom 25% of students. It is also reflected in Society by our division between elite fee paying Private Schools and Public Schools and in many other ways. Teachers in Australia have a relatively low social status, poor working conditions / pay compared to other professionals and hence more often than not teaching does not attract high performing graduates.

But, although social class is the bottom line here, none of the above is set in stone because capitalism is a dynamic system that continually generates new ideas, knowledge and new forms of activism to tackle inequality.

One aspect of Pearson's essay is that it does provide a good summary and discussion of methods used in the USA (Charters, Teach for America, KIPP, The New Teacher Project, Geoffrey Canada, Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein etc.) which has had more diverse approaches to educational reform than Australia

In this context Noel Pearson is a deep analytical thinker and pragmatic activist who is doing his best to raise up aboriginal Australians who have been treated so badly. He understands all the above but still tackles with insight and determination the most intractable of problems.

What policies and methods might be successful in achieving good educational outcomes for the mass of indigenous Australians?

He advocates a "No Excuses" approach combined with the methods developed by Siegfried Engelmann (Direct Instruction) and Kevin Whedall (MULTILIT). He has also been influential in the formation of Teach for Australia.

Pearson's superficial critics label him as a Rightist. Pearson analyses this phenomenon as well. Why is it that the middle class humanistic Left comes up with solutions to our worst social problems that make things even worse?

Education is not Pearson's primary field of expertise. There are other alternative educational approaches he does not mention and perhaps has not analysed. For instance, there is no mention of Piaget, Papert, Bruner, Alan Kay or Liping Ma.

One crucial point here is the need to scale basic educational reform, meaning basic numeracy and literacy. The methods advocated by the authors in the previous paragraph require highly skilled educators.

Pearson is not prepared to wait around for one or several generations waiting until we train up skilled teachers to go to remote rural locations. He agrees that teacher quality is the central issue for education reform (p.39) but he is looking beyond that truth to what can be done now to improve education for those who have missed out.

This is an essay which I would like to discuss more with those who have read it and thought about it.

the crazy logic of declining curriculum standards

I've been working with and working around bad curriculum standards for so long now that the idea that standards might be worth fighting for has become counter intuitive.

However, in a thoroughly researched blog about English Arts standards in the US of A, Tom Hoffman reminds me that some countries can discover new creatively disgraceful ways to race to the bottom even faster.

They are about to turn their English Arts standards over to testing companies and of course dumbed down standards are easier to test than more demanding standards

There is a crazy logic in this development which I have seen being played out in Australia over the past 15-20 years

1. Give teachers some autonomy. Social disadvantage does not reduce. Progressivist educators gnash teeth and wail.
2. Reluctantly, we conclude that teachers can't be trusted to fix it so we have to find a way to measure their work and hold them accountable
3. Progressively introduce more and more measuring (standardized test such as NAPLAN) and accountability techniques (comparisons between so called like schools)

Does this whole process logically lead to handing over the Curriculum standards to testing companies? Tom demonstrates that things can become much worse.

Given that our education minister, Julia Gillard is infatuated with the methods of Joel Klein (Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education), then this development makes me even more nervous.

xo australian deployments

Blue means full deployment and red means partial. Visit Google Maps here for more information, including the names of the schools

Congratulations to Rangan Srikhanta and the OLPC Australia team for their quiet, hard work in achieving all of this.

SBS Insight: Should schools test results be made public?

I'll flag this for anyone who wants to watch and read in preparation for more detailed future analysis and discussion.

SBS Insight, 18th August 2009: Best and Worst Schools - Should schools test results be made public?
Overview
Watch Online
Live Chat

This features Julia Gillard (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education), Barry McGaw (Chair of the Australian Curriculum and Assessment Authority), Brian Caldwell, Joel Klein (Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education) and others in a discussion about the Australian Labour Party Government policy to publish school performance on line at the end of this year

Some of the to and fro in this discussion is very interesting and provides a good starting point for a deeper analysis

Although part of the Gillard critique of schools is legitimate her analysis consists mainly of motherhood statements ("we will be there with resources ...", etc.) and the solution of publishing test results, which will lead to media outlets constructing league tables of schools, will not improve things.

Some issues raised need to be discussed in more depth:

• the problematic notion of comparing Like Schools (first it is not possible for many schools; second the whole notion of Like Schools is accepting inequality to start with - some schools are so Unlike that comparisons are pointless)
• the claim that smaller class sizes do not make a difference
• the Finland comparison articulated by Brian Caldwell
• Teach for Australia
• a fascinating exchange between Mary-Ellen Betts and Joel Klein about the New York experience
• how the media has already and will sensationalize complex issues - the editor of the Hobart Mercury was exposed here as a namer and shamer and was seen as ridiculous in his denial of this

At the end, the moderator, Jenny Brockie, did challenge critics of the Gillard policies to voice their alternatives. I think the alternative arises out of a correct analysis and I can provide a thumbnail here.

The problem is social class, that disadvantage does not arise alone from school and so cannot be fixed alone by school or teachers. In reformist terms, to make a real impact would require a co-ordinated effort involving:

• massive early intervention in cases where parents are not willing or capable of helping with their children's education
• raising the status and qualifications of teachers - Caldwell makes valid points wrt Finland requiring teachers to have a Masters Degree
• 1:1 assistance in the early years when children fall behind
• government intervention in welfare policy in cases where parents provide destructive learning environment for children, following the lead from Noel Pearson wrt indigenous policy

Rather than providing real answers the Gillard solution is attempting to leverage all or most of the responsibility of the problem onto teachers. Her talk of "being there" and providing extra resources is mainly rhetoric. It is true that schools have problems with under performing teachers ("deadwood") but that is mainly a representation of a far broader problem - the status and respect of education in Australian society. That broader problem is a government responsibility not just a responsibility to be passed onto teachers and schools.

There are votes in this - attempting to do it on the cheap and blaming teachers for the failure of government. Politicians have to be seen as doing something and for Julia and Labour that something is the "education revolution", an empty phrase which she uses far too much.

In this regard the most opportunist and disgusting rhetoric was that provided by Barry McGaw right at the start of Part 3 of the online video where he criticises the counsel of despair of those who claim that socio-economic disadvantage cannot be overcome and promotes himself as someone who is doing something effective about it.

the internet of things

Cerf: The Internet of things is on its way. The clear evidence of that, of course, is mobile to begin with, appliances that are now Internet-enabled, picture frames, refrigerators and things like that, office appliances, appliances at home. The smart grid is going to accelerate that process because more and more appliances will be part of the smart grid and its ensemble. They will be reporting their use. They will be accepting control saying, "Hey, don't run the air conditioner for the next 15 minutes, I'm in the middle of a peak load." We'll see many, many more devices on the Net than there are people [and] more sensor networks on the system, as well
- 'Father of Internet' Reviews His Work

shape 31

I asked some of my more able students to create the above shape in Turtle Art (from the Barry Newell shape sheet) using variables, so that by varying the input value they could create the same shape in different sizes, as shown below:




Well, this did set the cat amongst the pigeons even amongst my better students who had been happily in the groove making complex shapes from the BN sheet. One problem was that in their procedure they were using subtraction to alter side length and of course this will not work for variable size shapes.

Another issue is that despite doing algebra out of a textbook they didn't really grasp the box model of a variable, that you need for programming. Imagine a box which has a name, which doesn't vary, but you can put numbers (or other things) in the box which do vary.

So, I realised this was a nice challenge in real maths and understanding of the application of variables, measurement, ratio, proportion and fractions. I see this as an excellent example of constructionist maths in contrast to textbook maths.

Clue: When I measure the lengths of the "curly rectangle" (not sure what the correct name is) on a larger diagram in BN's book they are 46mm, 32mm and 39mm

Pearsons Writers Festival transcript (partial)

Here’s an extract I’ve transcribed from Noel Pearson’s speech to the Brisbane Writers Festival. He challenges us to recognize our self interest as real and outlines how the left has deteriorated from a radical movement in the 19th Century to a pseudo progressive movement that covertly opposes the interests of oppressed people. While Pearson spoke the Green Left organized a demonstration against him outside.

It’s best to listen to the audio (and the whole thing) since his delivery is very powerful. Source: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/foraradio/stories/2009/2686843.htm

14:00 minutes
I’m very taken with the discussion about self interest and its relationship with altruism …. you know Adam Smith’s discussion about self regard and other regard and the relationship between the two … and our capacity as human beings to have regard for other things than ourselves and our own interests

I want to make two observations about this

The problem with a lot of contemporary thinking about the whole question of self interest and altruism is that too many left liberals think that we can somehow abandon our self interest, that we can be completely altruistic

We forget David Hume’s point that self interest is present at all times. We never for a minute abandon our own self interest. It figures in all of our calculations, it is the starting point when we get up in the morning. and yet we carry on with a conceit that somehow we are singular in our capacity to transcend our self interest in favour of the interests of other members of society, in favour of the environment, in favour of a whole lot of important causes

As the old leftist would say, we engage in false consciousness, we’re kidding ourselves when we think we are singular in our ability to cut a link with our self interest. Yes we are human and we have that extraordinary human capacity to transcend our interests. But we are never cut off from it

And my great truculence in relation to the whole environmental debate and peoples’ concerns about the state of the planet, the destruction of bio diversity, climate change and so on, is that too much of this discussion takes place as if we are uniquely capable of putting aside our self interest. We are not. We engage in conceit when we think we can. The minute our interests start getting effected is the minute that we will buck up. And in my view the great function of the western environmental movement (it will not have the function of effectively confronting and solving the problems of environmentally catastrophe facing the world. I don’t believe it) … All that the western environmental movement will do will be to try to shift the cost to those who can least bear it. (repeated again) The minute that the changes that are sought will affect your interests, those in this room, is the minute you will turn against those changes

And this kind of schizophrenia about us not wanting our material well being to suffer whilst at the same time wanting a whole lot of fundamental changes made to the way we deal with the environment is an absolute reflection of the fact that when it comes down to it, whatever we might profess is at odds with what our actual interests are

The other point I wanted to discuss is that in consideration of the predicament of indigenous Australians our analysis has not just got to take into account the horizontal division between indigenous and non indigenous Australians – the race division. We can’t understand what is going on here unless we also understand the vertical stratification within the indigenous community and so on. This is not just a question of race. It is also a question of class. And this is one of the issues I address in my Quarterly essay. I am not just an aboriginal Australian. I am in truth a middle class aboriginal. And there are many indigenous people who share that class position with me. And a real challenge for us is the challenge in relation to whether many of the things we believe in represent our interests in our class status. Or are we unique in our ability to abandon our interests in being members of a class? It seems to me that that is another conceit that we engage in. There is a middle class black Australia. In my Quarterly essay I seek to discuss what comes down to a real challenge to the black middle class and the white middle class left.

In my view the middle class left is by definition an oxymoron. There is no true middle class left. It is in the definition of the tradition an impossible category. In my Quarterly essay I seek to articulate my argument in relation to this.

My own view about political economy is that the Left / Right divide has swung over time. Its polarized around this way. They are not true Left and Right positions. Because the original critique of liberal political economy that was advanced in the 19th Century was a radical critique. This is not the critique that the Left advances today. So the winds of political economy have swung over the past century and a half such that, yes, there is a cultural and political animus between left and right today. But it is not an animus on the original plane. The left’s critique is not a radical critique as it was when it was first invented. The threatening radical critique that was developed in the 19th Century in response to liberal capitalism is not the lefts position today.

And so we get to the really curious situation where we find ourselves in relation to the predicament in relation to aboriginal Australians. I’ve been an absolutely unrelenting advocate for the land rights of my people of Cape York. We have been relentless in insisting on the land rights and land entitlement of our people. And we’ve recovered a lot of lands under state legislation and under the Mabo decision and the Wik decision. Over the course of the last 20 years we’ve made great gains in restoring the land rights of our people. Mabo was extremely important in that as was the Wik decision.

Now the agenda for our development is an agenda that promotes both land rights and reform. – development reform and welfare reform. Our people taking responsibility for our lives, rebuilding families, rebuilding the strength in our people. And never succumbing to victimhood .

And we’ve been at odds with so much of the progressive thinking around what was right for aboriginal people. In my Quarterly essay I discuss a rule of thumb I’ve always had. The rule of thumb that I’ve had over the past 10 years is one that says whatever the progressive nostrum is to a particular issue we have got to look at approximately the opposite of that for the solution. And it’s always born out. In searching for the right way forward our rule of thumb is nearly always born out. If we do almost the opposite of what is prescribed it turns out to be the right thing to do.

And that’s a strange state of affairs. It is strange that on too many issues the progressive position is regressive. The progressive position would see us further unravel and make no progress.

We actually need more law and order in order to have freedom. But the progressive position is 180 degrees away from that. In my writing over the years I’ve sought to articulate this position about how it is that the sails of progressive thinking are set almost entirely in a way that I would be able to argue is contrary to our interests

I could give many examples of this. One of which is our position with regard to welfare. My position is that we’re not entitled to welfare. We’re entitled to a fair place in the economy like you people. How is it that you’ve convinced me that I’ve a right to 12,500 dollars per annum. How is it that I have been convinced that I’ve a right to 12,500 dollars per annum. I’ve a greater right than that. I have a right to a share in the country like the rest of you. I have a greater right than welfare. But if you condition a people to think, "Geez, we have a right to welfare, we’re going to defend it to the death", then you’re defending your right to remain at the bottom of the pyramid. With complete obedience you accept your position down there. But we in Cape York say no. we’ve got a better right than welfare. We’ve got a right to take a real place in the economy. Just like everybody else.

So on numerous policy settings we set the sails in a completely different position from the progressive prescription ... how is that our culture can produce currents to get an oppressed people to accept their oppression, to get an oppressed people to accept their right to welfare.
28:00 minutes

Noel Pearson's speech to Writers Festival

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/foraradio/stories/2009/2686843.htm

links to a fabulous recent talk by Noel Pearson (41 minutes) to the Brisbane Writers festival replete with biting sarcastic humour whilst the green left demonstrate against him outside

conservatism, socialism, liberalism - we came to the view that these three great traditions are each necessary in defining a good society

13 minutes elaboration, including … there is no miraculous social justice forklift - only individuals climb the stairs

then discusses the relationship b/w self interest and altruism - lets drop the conceit that self interest is not involved in our motivations

the middle class left is an oxymoron

then he lets rip into wilderness society protesters who have a far greater carbon footprint than the average indigenous family from Cape York

He refers to a recent essay he has written (Quarterly essay) which discusses the real relationship b/w left and right - at the end the title is identified: “Radical Hope”, soon to be published by Black Ink

fabulous speech, take the time to listen - it deserves a better review than these hasty notes

skeptical about economic recovery

I'm skeptical about the green shoots talk of economic recovery

I'm very far from being expert about economics. I do hope to get back to studying it more soon.

How do you judge these things when you are not expert?

Well, if those experts who did predict this "great recession" thought that there was a real recovery happening then I would be more inclined to think it true

Who are those experts who have some real credibility?

Steve Keen (of Western Sydney Uni) is one. I'm subscribing to his blog: Steve Keen's Debtwatch: Analysing the Global Debt Bubble

One of Keen's blogs links to this pdf ("No one saw it coming") which includes a list of 12 experts who predicted the recession:

Dean Baker, US co-director, Center for Economic and Policy Research
“ …plunging housing investment will likely push the economy into recession.” (2006)

Wynne Godley, US Distinguished Scholar, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College
“The small slowdown in the rate at which US household debt levels are rising resulting form the house price decline, will immediately lead to a …sustained growth recession … before 2010”. (2006). “Unemployment [will] start to rise significantly and does not come down again.” (2007)

Fred Harrison, UK Economic commentator
“The next property market tipping point is due at end of 2007 or early 2008 …The only way prices can be brought back to affordable levels is a slump or recession” (2005).

Michael Hudson, US professor, University of Missouri
“Debt deflation will shrink the “real” economy, drive down real wages, and push our debt-ridden economy into Japan-style stagnation or worse.” (2006)

Eric Janszen, US investor and iTulip commentator
“The US will enter a recession within years” (2006). “US stock markets are likely to begin in 2008 to experience a “Debt Deflation Bear Market” (2007)

Stephen Keen, Australia associate professor, University of Western Sydney
“Long before we manage to reverse the current rise in debt, the economy will be in a recession. On current data, we may already be in one.” (2006)

Jakob Brøchner Madsen & Jens Kjaer Sørensen, Denmark
professor & graduate student, Copenhagen University
“We are seeing large bubbles and if they bust, there is no backup. The outlook is very bad” (2005)” The bursting of this housing bubble will have a severe impact on the world economy and may even result in a recession” (2006).

Kurt Richebächer, US private consultant and investment newsletter writer
“The new housing bubble – together with the bond and stock bubbles – will invariably implode in the foreseeable future, plunging the U.S. economy into a protracted, deep recession” (2001). “A recession and bear market in asset prices are inevitable for the U.S. economy… All remaining questions pertain solely to speed, depth and duration of the economy’s downturn.” (2006)

Nouriel Roubini, US professor, New York University
“Real home prices are likely to fall at least 30% over the next 3 years“(2005). “By itself this house price slump is enough to trigger a US recession.” (2006)

Peter Schiff , US stock broker, investment adviser and commentator
“[t]he United States economy is like the Titanic …I see a real financial crisis coming for the United States.” (2006). “There will be an economic collapse” (2007).

Robert Shiller , US professor, Yale University
“There is significant risk of a very bad period, with rising default and foreclosures, serious trouble in financial markets, and a possible recession sooner than most of us expected.” (2006)

Sutton reviews Pearson

Here I Stand
An excellent review by Peter Sutton of Noel Pearson's book "Up from the Mission". Actually it is more a review of Pearson, the person, his gifts and incredible contribution to Australia.

40 maths shapes challenges

Forty shapes to make in Scratch or some other version of logo, such as Turtle Art. It's hard to see the thumbnail but click on it for a larger view.

This is one of the best sheets ever for teaching maths (designed by Barry Newell):

• the logo turtle or scratch cat acts as a transitional object between the concrete maths shape and the abstraction of the script that makes the shape
• the sheet includes both simple and complex shapes, increasing in order of complexity, there is a challenge there for everyone
• many of the more complex shapes are made up of combinations of the simpler shapes

Source: Barry Newell's Turtle Confusion (1988)

scratch challenges update

I'm using this challenge sheet with Year 10s at the moment and have updated it, improving the order of challenges and adding some extensions. The first one is very popular with students. Scratch is a free download.

btw there is a new scratch page for educators, scratched, but I haven't checked it out fully yet.

SCRATCH CHALLENGES

1) Use the Letter shapes to write your first name on the page. Then introduce some special effects such as making the letters wobble and change their appearance.

2) Point, click and move
Make an object both point and glide towards the mouse position when you click on the stage
Hint: Motion > point towards
Hint: Sensing > mouse down?

3) Make Dan or Anjuli or Cassy or ballerina dance to a beat, using all of their dance shapes

4a) Make two animals have a forwards and backwards conversation
Hint: Use broadcast
4b) Make it an interesting conversation with each animal speaking at least 3 times and making gestures too

5) Make 2 different balls move around on the stage
a) the first ball moves in straight lines but bounces randomly whenever it hits the edge
b) the second moves randomly, changing direction all the time

6a) One sprite chases another sprite around the stage. The first sprite moves in straight line but bounces off the edge randomly. The chasing sprite chases the first sprite but is moving slower.
b) Extension – if the chasing sprite catches the other sprite then it says something sensible and makes a suitable sound

7a) Play all the different drum sounds automatically
Hint: create a variable for the drum number
b) Extension – keep recycling through all the drum sounds automatically

8) Make a sprite gradually grow in size and then shrink
Hint: make a size variable

9a) Count down on a timer. A rocket takes off when you reach zero
Hint: Use the number icons in the letters folder
9b) Your rocket has pulsating exhaust and disappears at the top of the screen

10) Add, multiply or subtract two variable numbers
Hint: Just to do addition only you will need 4 variables: firstNum, secondNum, answer (computer calculated) and myAnswer (human calculated)

11) Variable coloured squares
a) Write a script that can draw a square of any size
Hint: Make a variable for the side length
b) Use the variable square script to draw a series of square with variable sides, with a single click
c) Now add variable pen colour and pen shade to the variable square script and use it to draw a variety of different coloured squares, with a single click

windows 7 sins

Correction (28th August):
I have to withdraw my support from this FSF campaign owing to their attack on the xo in the education link of their site (click on the Learn More link at their site). They conclude:

... it is expected that the main effect of the OLPC project -- if it succeeds -- will be to turn millions of children into Microsoft dependents. That is a negative effect, to the point where the world would be better off if the OLPC project had never existed.

I think this is far too over zealous and purist. Also note that at this time not a single xo has shipped with Windows.

Update (2nd September): The section I was complaining about above has been removed and replaced with:

Microsoft is now targeting governments who are purchasing XOs, in an attempt to get them to replace the free software with Windows. It remains to be seen to what degree Microsoft will succeed. But with all of this pressure, Microsoft has harmed a project that has distributed more than 1 million laptops running free software, and has taken aim at the low-cost platform as a way to make poor children around the world dependent on its products. The OLPC threatens to become another example of the way Microsoft convinces governments around the world that an education involving computers must be synonymous with an education using Windows. In order to prevent this, it is vital that we work to raise global awareness of the harm Microsoft's involvement does to our children's education.

I did write a letter to Peter Brown of the FSF on the 29th August complaining about that section but so far have not received a reply.

Just for the record my original post is below (not altered apart from this correction):

As far as I can see the following indictment of Microsoft from the Free Software Foundation is entirely correct:

1. Poisoning education: Today, most children whose education involves computers are being taught to use one company's product: Microsoft's. Microsoft spends large sums on lobbyists and marketing to corrupt educational departments. An education using the power of computers should be a means to freedom and empowerment, not an avenue for one corporation to instill its monopoly.

2. Invading privacy: Microsoft uses software with backward names like Windows Genuine Advantage to inspect the contents of users' hard drives. The licensing agreement users are required to accept before using Windows warns that Microsoft claims the right to do this without warning.

3. Monopoly behavior: Nearly every computer purchased has Windows pre-installed -- but not by choice. Microsoft dictates requirements to hardware vendors, who will not offer PCs without Windows installed on them, despite many people asking for them. Even computers available with other operating systems like GNU/Linux pre-installed often had Windows on them first.

4. Lock-in: Microsoft regularly attempts to force updates on its users, by removing support for older versions of Windows and Office, and by inflating hardware requirements. For many people, this means having to throw away working computers just because they don't meet the unnecessary requirements for the new Windows versions.

5. Abusing standards: Microsoft has attempted to block free standardization of document formats, because standards like OpenDocument Format would threaten the control they have now over users via proprietary Word formats. They have engaged in underhanded behavior, including bribing officials, in an attempt to stop such efforts.

6. Enforcing Digital Restrictions Management (DRM): With Windows Media Player, Microsoft works in collusion with the big media companies to build restrictions on copying and playing media into their operating system. For example, at the request of NBC, Microsoft was able to prevent Windows users from recording television shows that they have the legal right to record.

7. Threatening user security: Windows has a long history of security vulnerabilities, enabling the spread of viruses and allowing remote users to take over people's computers for use in spam-sending botnets. Because the software is secret, all users are dependent on Microsoft to fix these problems -- but Microsoft has its own security interests at heart, not those of its users.

http://windows7sins.org/