The poor get poorer in Texas public schools

The Waco Trib has a good article about how school districts, faced with diminished federal and state funds (are you listening, Greg Abbott? of course not), more and more school districts are searching high and low for grant money to supplement the lost funds elsewhere.

Only one problem.

As the article notes, many poorer and/or smaller school districts can't afford a full-time grantwriter.

Many districts created educational foundations several years ago, but those were done in part to adjust for flat or declining state dollars back then. To expect an education foundation to ramp up even more, or one starting from scratch to meet not just a couple of years worth, but a decade's worth, of revenue issues, is too much.

And yet, voters in "red" communities and school districts who aren't as rich as Dallas-area's Highland Park, or even as the Waco area Midway, will still pull the "R" lever unthinkingly on Nov. 4.

Well, folks, if you're voting to perpetuate your own problems, you deserve the problems you're perpetuating.

At the same time, school districts are whoring themselves out too much for technology, like the iPads mentioned near the bottom. That money you raise?

Spend it on better teachers. Spend it on better, and greener, playgrounds. Spend it on a school community garden. All of that will help your kids more than iPads.

#Coffitivity: Stupider than the #MozartEffect

And snobbier, too!

A Facebook friend sent me a link to Coffitivity, which makes the Mozart Effect sound like actual science!

Quoting from the website:

Coffee shop sounds boost creativity, now those sounds are at your fingertips!

And, the hints of impeccable social science studies backing this up follow.

First, recognizing true junk science combined with true Nice Polite Republican Volvo-driving, latte-sipping, Meyer-lemon-squeezing, Obama-loving sales pitches is the key to this.

As for that research? They link to one study, which looks at ambient noise in general, not one particular type of ambient noise, and that doesn't actually claim to prove anything. Here:

Based on the above research, we predict that the distraction caused by a moderate (vs. low) level of noise will induce processing difficulty, leading to abstract processing and, consequently, to greater creativity.

Predict ain't the same as prove. Fail. And, it's not called The Journal of Consumer Research for nothing. Sorry, but why doesn't the University of Chicago actually get empirical behavioral economics rolling more and more?

Next, the study did say that moderately varying ambient sound isn't the only way to possibly boost creativity. It said colors of moderate intensity with moderate changes could do the same.

Like .... being out in nature!

And, because we're more modern than the Mozart Effect, there's no CDs. There's apps! And even an employee called a "growth hacker"!

Now, to riff on my stereotypical neoliberal rant from above.

Of course, Coffitivity's targeted only to Mac users, because we know you PC types still buy fucking No. 1-selling Folgers from the can at the grocery store.

That rant about Folgers, etc., is sparked by something Kai Rissdahl had on Marketplace on NPR yesterday. I wrote the following brief snark.

Your Kai Rissdahl + Marketplace teh stupid + dog whistle, perhaps, for today: "Coffee snobs, you may want to shut off your radios for the next 2 minutes and 10 seconds." He then says, Did you know the best selling coffee in America at the grocery store is ...... (long ellipsis)

"Folgers."

No shit, Sherlock? Folgers, or Maxwell House as No. 2, were brainless guesses. Why? They're cheap and they've been around for a century longer than Starbucks.

That said, although not as bad as 20 years ago, since they do use all Arabica beans now, they're still semi-dreck compared to real coffees.

That said, the best Robustas are better than the worst Arabicas, but our coffee snob balloon buster didn't tell us that.

So, of course, something like this is geared to iPods and iPads. A little more come-on to Volvo-driving, latte-sipping, Meyer-lemon-squeezing types that only Mac users are really creative? Your iPad or iPhone is fine, but Android coffee drinkers need not apply? See that subtle dogwhistle in there, too? Yes, halfway down the page it has a blurb for non-Mac smartphone users, but right below the banner, it says: 

Available for Mac, iPhone, and iPad in the App Store!

Sorry, even if you talk about generic smartphones later, that's still a dogwhistle in my book.

Anyway, had to email the Coffitivity folks this:

Coffee research shows drinking six or more cups a day shortens your life span. A more serious than anything you've done, in-depth, longitudinal study shows that.

More coffee research shows that the stress from wondering what 'growth hacker' to buy, how much money one can afford for it, and worrying about the high prices of Starbucks plus the health effects of all the sugar and fats from non-coffee 'coffee drinks' further shortens one's lifespan.

And, I'm not joking.

One real, longitudinal study, from the Mayo Clinic, though kind of iffy on its follow-up questions, says six or more cups a day can shorten lifespan due to increasing cardiovascular problems. Another, lesser study says that six or more cups a day may increase metabolic syndrome, a diabetes precursor.

And I Tweeted them this:

Coffitivity sounds like another typical American "magic bullet" fail. Euclid: There is no #MozartEffect route to learning.

Because that's exactly what it sounds like. Of course, Euclid didn't have Starbucks, or coffee in general, so I'm riffing on his famous "there is no royal road to learning" comments to Alexander the Great.

What's next? Sounding like coffee snobs about different coffeehouse ambient noises? But of course, I'm sure.

"Our 'Afternoon Enchantment' is a medium-light roast of noise, perfect for those midday times when your mind, like your body, craves a siesta but you know you must do work."

Also, misspelling the root word in a mash-up, i.e., "coffee" in this case, will get you an extra spanking from me as an editor.

Some top #SteveJobs jokes

Update, Oct. 5, 2011: Steve Jobs is dead. Of course, this post, written on the day and day after he resigned as Apple CEO, is hashtagged and getting plenty of hits. Jobs was a marketing genius, if nothing else, even if his creativity level took a back seat during his second Apple stint. That said, is his death like that of John Lennon's? Well, maybe in that both were overmourned.

One obit, reaching for historic gravitas, compared Jobs to Thomas Edison. On the side of myth, I'd say that's about right. Edison's myth was different: Many of "his" inventions were created by assistants in Edison's labs.

Is it the degree of authoritarianism, even by modern CEO standards? Is it the personal marketing intermingled with the product marketing? I personally don't "get" what has driven the Steve Jobs hagiography. That said, going beyond Adbusters types, I can be non-commercial without trying to commercialize myself by the back door, including thinking that Apple is somehow anti-capitalist.

So, in doing an irreverent take on the cultic reverence for Jobs and his self-marketed image, I offer a mix of one-liners and zingers, at least some of them with serious thought behind the zing.

OH, and  do NOT forget your WWJobsD bracelets! Since we're already being told that Jobs would support "Occupy Wall Street" (I kind of doubt it), we will surely be bombarded with his alleged wisdom in the future.

The iCoffin! Stylish Apple coloring.

Speaking of marketing, branding and cultic angles, I have no doubt people are already Photoshopping the silver Apple logo onto the lids of black walnut Mac AirBook caskets, Photoshopping Apple aficionados crying silver Apple logo tears and more. And, to beat them to the punch ... on the left, I introduce the iCoffin! No word if you can jailbreak this baby, or if it's one size fits all. And, that's the Classic version. The iCoffin Touch? You touch the Apple logo to scroll through all the different iTunes-recorded eulogies. Press the center of the logo, and a holographic Jobs "shuffles"! The Nano iCoffin? It cryogenically preserves Steve Jobs for re-integration as an Apple iBorg!

And, speaking of iBorgs and hagiography, get a load of a worshiper's art, at left. That MacBook is probably worth more disassembled than it was put together.

Speaking of the funeral, will we have a funeral as hagiographic as that of Ayatollah Khomenei? It wouldn't surprise me, the way I see people talking in semi-salvific terms about Jobs. Speaking of that, will we have Sevener and Twelver Appleholics battling over the location of The Hidden Imam Jobs? People fighting to touch the casket? The hem of Jobs' black burial turtleneck? Hoping for magical healing powers?

I guess we won't,  if it's going to be private .. but ... I bet somebody arranges at least one "surrogate funeral," or wake, or something.

Will we get a Steve Jobs funeral iPhone/iPad app? Maybe there's one called iMourn. When you launch the app, a Chinese worker at Foxconn gets Tasered into crying. That would be followed by iMourn2, where Chinese workers at fake Apple stores go into fake mourning, which may be happening. Or worse, they actually are mourning as much as Appleholics here in America.

And, it's nice to see the cultists doing most my Photoshopping work for me. I still haven't gotten around to Photoshopping Apples being crapped in the punchbowl.

Anyway, if not the iMourn, we could have the iDie, an app that connects you to the Hemlock Society.

And, will Apple release a "Steve Jobs' favorites" music list available for iTunes download? Will we get his Illinois commencement speech and other words of Jobs' wisdom also available for download? Since others compare him to John Lennon, that music list would include "While My iPod Gently Weeps," right? Snark aside, ti would not surprise me one whit if they actually happened.

Will Jobs dial all Apple product users with a final message, "Sent from my iCoffin - Steve Jobs"?

Was the iPhone 4S ... 4 Steve? (More serious "hagiography" - was it rushed out because his demise was known to be imminent, even though it wasn't an iPhone 5? So ... how do you kill the iPhone 5? You kill Steve Jobs!)

Will we see the lakes turn Apple rainbow colors? The skies rain silver Apples? Is the iApocalypse here?

No, but "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs" is! Seriously, I've put this unauthorized bio in my Amazon cart. Deutschman accurately compares Jobs, one reviewer says, to a televangelist.

If he's not a televangelist, did you know Jobs is an iCon? Well, he's an icon to worshipers, but an iCon, pun obviously intended, to an even harder hitting biographer. (That said, this book sounds a bit more iffy.)

Did you know Jobs had no big brother? That's because he WAS Big Brother!

Meanwhile, on with the jokes!

What the iGenius who has everything, including monetarily, should get his iDaughter? Nothing! You deny paternity instead!

What do you call Jobs' business model for Apple? It's iProfit!

Or, there’s the iFlop app. When you launch this, you immediately get a list of the:

1. Apple III (unreliable)

2. Lisa (underpriced by the Mac)

3. NeXT Computer (overpriced)

4. Puck Mouse (stupid, and showing Jobs’ design instinct wasn’t unerring)

5. The Cube (overpriced based only on design)

6. iTunes phone (don’t want to forget this)

7. Apple TV (Jobs would like to forget this)

8. Add to this AP list the decision to kill the Mac clones market.

That said ... continue on to additional jokes below the fold, written on the day Jobs announced his resignation as Apple CEO. (The one about rising three days later might be apropos.) There's also more seriousness about Foxconn and other Apple reality behind the Apple myth. (And welcome, whoever was visitor 10,000  at about 2 a.m. Eastern time Oct. 7.)

More on the Apple iPhone spying

First, Apple has already spoken, indirectly, about this issue in the past, but it's still not talking now.

Among its claims is that it "decouples" the GPS tracking data it gets from individual phones. Well, if that's the case, then why can't it also create a way for that data to be erased from the original phone after 12 hours, if a jailbreak app can do that and more.

Then, there's Steve Jobs' hypocrisy about how it's OK for Apple to spy on its users but NOT for third-party app makers to do this:

"Before any app can get location data, they can't just put up a panel asking if it can use location, they call our panel and it asks you if it's OK," Jobs said.

"That's one of the reasons we have the curated App Store. A lot of the people in the Valley think we're old-fashioned about this. But we take it seriously."

Some of us think it's not "old-fashioned," but Orwellian.

Second, not so smug from Jobs haters. Some Android phones do the same thing.

Apple spy probs heat up - devices used for govt spying!

As I blogged yesterday, if you have an iPhone or iPad, Apple is potentially spying on you. Ditto if you save iPhone or iPad info to a Mac computer.

I saw this and said, "just wow." In the consumer part of the tech world, Apple, even more than Google, has a reputation (though not totally deserved even before this) of being "good guys."

No longer, eh?

Not only is Apple sniffing out and tracking your location, the data it gets from that is unencrypted.

I said yesterday that people are surely waiting on Steve Jobs to explain this.

So far, crickets.

But, another information security analyst makes three interesting claims, the last the worst.

1. This isn't new or secret. Supposedly, according to Alex Levinson, it's been on older versions of Apple devices and so reported.

2. Apple isn't keeping this data. That's even asother researchers claim the tracking is likely a mistake, which gives us two other issues.
A. If it's a mistake, then why's it been on Apple devices in previous generations?
B. If it's NOT a mistake, why should we believe Apple isn't collecting this data? Remember, it's competing more and more, if indirectly, with Google for online advertising.

3. This isn't listed as a separate point; Levinson's actual point 3 recapitulates Point 1. But, here's Levinson giving us the Orwellian secret, per Financial Times:

Through my work with various law enforcement agencies, we’ve used h-cells.plist on devices older than iOS 4 to harvest geolocational evidence from iOS devices.

WTF??

An information security analyst has been helping police departments spy on people's locations!

Levinson adds:
When the iPhone 4 came out, I was one of the first people in San Francisco to grab one.
Well, of course. You needed the latest generation of your spy tool.

Per his bio, Levinson advises both governments and private businesses.

Another blogger has already followed up on these ideas in an interview with Levinson.

Levinson declined to divulge the names of those agencies (whom he had advised), but told me that he had worked with “multiple state and federal agencies both in the U.S. and internationally.”

So, what other governments are snooping on iPhone users? In response to my initial blog post, a friend in Japan said she'd be far from labeling Apple as "evil." Want to at least partially rethink?

And, speaking of corporations ...

Let's see, a corporation could give all its employees iPads or iPhones as a perk, or a work tool, then spy on them. How much more Orwellian can this get? (Wait, I'm not sure I want to know.)

Given all this, and assuming this isn't a "mistake," it's no wonder we hear just crickets, not Steve Jobs, at Cupertino, Calif.

That all said, there is an app to stop this. You have to jailbreak your iPhone first. (I assume this all applies to iPads, too.)

More here on what may also be a Fourth Amendment violation against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Update, April 23: First, Apple has already spoken, indirectly, about this issue in the past, but it's still not talking now.

Among its claims is that it "decouples" the GPS tracking data it gets from individual phones. Well, if that's the case, then why can't it also create a way for that data to be erased from the original phone after 12 hours, if a jailbreak app can do that and more.

Second, not so smug from Jobs haters. Some Android phones do the same thing.

Steve Jobs and Apple are spying on you

Well, if you have an iPhone or iPad, they are. Ditto if you save iPhone or iPad info to a Mac computer.

I saw this and said, "just wow." In the consumer part of the tech world, Apple, even more than Google, has a reputation (though not totally deserved even before this) of being "good guys."

No longer, eh?

Not only is Apple sniffing out and tracking your location, the data it gets from that is unencrypted.

Here's the final insult to injury:

It turns out that there is no way to remove the data from your iPhone or 3G-enabled iPad — and there is no way to stop the devices from recording anything further. All you can do is secure the information that is on your computer — you can do so by selecting the "encrypted backups" options in the syncing settings — and be aware that all this data exists.

Waiting for Steve Jobs to explain, or try to explain away, this one.

The heck with Watson and jobs — here comes iPad!

Long before the Jeopardy! carpet-munching, scene-stealing computer takes over customer service jobs, the iPad may take over plenty of others.

One casual sit-down restaurant chain is using iPads to partially replace service staff. Patrons will order off an iPad menu and pay,if on credit, with a built-in card swiper. The story notes plenty of ways in which this might not work so well, but, other restaurants will certainly be eyeing BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse.

An obvious location for something like this could be drive-through lanes of fast food restaurants, or drive-ins ... if an iPad is encased against theft, first, and second, can be made to swivel or pull out enough to be usable from a car window.

Especially at a drive-in, with multiple stations, like a Sonic, rather than a single-lane drive-through, yes, this could be tempting.

Or a White Castle, where you can get long lines inside, but the menu's simple.

Why does Steve Jobs hate gays?

Beyond the ludicrous nature of some iPhone/iPad censorship, due to the biased nature of some of the censorship, it's a serious question.

Could iPad affect book copyright payments?

It's possible, and, per one non-fiction author, long overdue.