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Romney Wants Fewer Teachers, Cops and Firefighters

The National Education Association is righteously furious over Mitt Romney’s want for fewer teachers, cops and firefighters:

GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s disdainful comments on Friday about needing fewer teachers, police officers and firefighters showed how out of touch he is with middle class America. Appearing today on “Fox News Sunday” with Chris Wallace, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a high-profile Romney campaign supporter and potential candidate for vice president, continued the attack on working families when he called for the elimination of unions for teachers, police officers and firefighters.

“Mitch Daniels is wrong. America isn’t better off when teachers can’t advocate for their students or first-responders can’t negotiate for better training and more safety equipment—which could mean the difference between life and death,” said NEA President Van Roekel, who also appeared on the morning news program. “These divisive and politically motivated tactics Gov. Daniels is pushing to help the Romney campaign are disrespectful and demeaning to the people who teach our children, protect our communities and run into burning buildings to save lives.”

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Eyes on the Street in the Early Lives of Cities

In the early lives of cities, having “eyes on the street” was the prime way neighborhood crime was policed and thwarted. The classic, semiotic, image of that early neighborhood watch was the old woman leaning out the window, delicately balancing her elbows in a feather pillow on the windowsill as she watched the activity on the street below.

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The FDNY Firefighter Spy

We’ve turned a horrible new page in the War on Terror as the FDNY — The Fire Department of the City of New York — have joined with the Department of Homeland Security to spy on residents.

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Naked Blogging as Semiotics Shall Rule the Word

We are living in the Golden Age of Text. We most effectively communicate on blogs, in email and via instant messages where The Word is King. However, in the next five years or so we will toss away our text — along with our newly enhanced ability to cogently write to persuade others — in favor of video: Semiotics Shall Rule the Word. There are active rumors that the next iPhone will have a touch screen that is a camera so you can do live video conferencing via iChat right on your phone. There is one proof-of-concept using the current iPhone that persuasively argues for video communication over text right now.

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Policing and Loving the Ordinary Enemy Civilian

I heard an interesting discussion on the radio the other day that the problem with modern policing in the urban core today is not only the matter of Pretend Police replacing real officers, but also one of the police distrusting the general public by considering everyone a danger instead of innocent, ordinary, people.

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Subscribe Via Google FeedBurner

Now that WordPress.com no longer offers RSS feeds stats analysis, you can try to work around that deficit as a Blog owner by signing up for the just-purchased-by-Google FeedBurner Service. All the keen “Pro” FeedBurner features are now FREE! RSS feed stats can be valuable in telling you who is reading your blog and through what method. FeedBurner allows you to “re-burn” your default RSS feed.

On my Boles University Blogger blog, you can tell your Blogger to use the FeedBurner RSS feed instead of the default feed. That’s a great way to unify RSS feeds under a single master. I cover in-depth how to use FeedBurner with Blogger and Google Apps in my new book, the Google Apps Administrator Guide due soon from Thomson Publishing and CoursePTR.

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A Shot Heard in Far Rockaway is Felt in Fulham

Two days ago a Haitian immigrant friend of mine — who recently landed in Far Rockaway, Queens to find a better life and to chase the American Dream — heard a fight in the street below his apartment.
He then made the fatal mistake of the curious and went to his window to see what was happening. A stray 9mm bullet shot from the street blasted through his window, ricocheted off his collarbone, and punctured his heart. He was dead before his body slumped to the floor.

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