Slashdot | Stallman Convinces Cuba to Switch to Open Source

Slashdot | Stallman Convinces Cuba to Switch to Open Source
“It’s a big victory for Richard Stallman in North America, as Cuba decided to adopt open source software on the national level. Both Cuba and Venezuela are currently working on switching the entire government infrastructure to GNU/Linux operating system and applications, the Associated Press reports from Havana: ‘Both governments say they are trying to wean state agencies from Microsoft’s proprietary Windows to the open-source Linux operating system, which is developed by a global community of programmers who freely share their code.’ The AP article doesn’t mention the distro used for government workers, but says that the students are working on a Gentoo-based distro.”
[Full story: iWon News - Cuba Embraces Open-Source Software]

Palm Island Florida

I just uploaded a pile of pictures today at
Palm Island Florida - a photoset on Flickr. I’m down here on the beach marking blogs…

The power of praise

Just got this forwarded fromSarah: Mind Hacks: The power of praise
The power of praise:

There’s a fascinating article in the New York Magazine
about the dramatic effects of different types of praise on a child’s success when tackling new challenges.

A team of researchers led by Prof Carole Dweck asked children to complete a series of short tests, and randomly divided into groups. Each child was given a single line of praise.

One group was praised for their intelligence (”You must be smart at this”), while the others were praised for their effort (”You must have worked really hard”). This simple difference had a startling effect.

Children who were praised for their effort were more likely to choose a harder test when given a choice, were less likely to become disheartened when given a test they were guaranteed to fail, and when finally given the original tests again, their marks improved.

In contrast, the children praised for their intelligence tended to choose an easier test if asked, were distressed by failure, and actually had worse marks after re-taking the original tests.

Dweck had suspected that praise could backfire, but even she was surprised by the magnitude of the effect. “Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control,” she explains. “They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.”

In follow-up interviews, Dweck discovered that those who think that innate intelligence is the key to success begin to discount the importance of effort. I am smart, the kids’ reasoning goes; I don’t need to put out effort. Expending effort becomes stigmatized—it’s public proof that you can’t cut it on your natural gifts.

Repeating her experiments, Dweck found this effect of praise on performance held true for students of every socioeconomic class. It hit both boys and girls—the very brightest girls especially (they collapsed the most following failure).

Praising children is incredibly important. Countless psychological studies have shown that excessive critical comments have a damaging effect on mental health.

This research just suggests that in terms of encouraging children to tackle challenges effectively, praising their effort seems more effective than praising their intelligence.

Cognitive Daily: A fifteen-minute exercise may help overcome a lifetime of racial stereotyping

Cognitive Daily: A fifteen-minute exercise may help overcome a lifetime of racial stereotyping is fascinating. Anyone interested in social justice issues should read this.