Brazil President Blames ‘White People’ for Crisis

Brazil President Blames ‘White People’ for Crisis

Brazil’s president blamed “white people with blue eyes” for the world economic crisis and said it was wrong that developing countries should pay for mistakes made in richer countries, sparking accusations of racism.

“This crisis was caused by the irrational behavior of white people with blue eyes, who thought they knew everything and now show they know nothing,” Lula da Silva said…

When challenged about his claims, Lula said: “I only record what I see in the press. I am not acquainted with a single black banker,” according the Guardian newspaper.

I can’t say anything about banking. The only banking officials I’ve dealt with over the past 20 years were Zelia, and she is Portuguese (Azorian I think), and Munisa, and she’s of Indian extraction. Perhaps it is a Toronto thing, but I don’t remember seeing blond/blues in my banking experience. Perhaps Lula da Silva should come and hang in my neck of the woods. To be fair, everyone who has bought into the model that economists can tell anything of value from their models with any certainty or that they would be responsible for their thoughts and actions should look in the mirror first. I never understood why countries didn’t bypass the G8 and do their own thing… but no… greed is universal, and Brazil like everyone else wanted to play with the big boys, and got bit along with them. Nothing to do cept look in the mirror and ask “why did I buy in to the system?”

Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE)

Buridan just sent me this link. I’m really interested in the role of informal learning about science. I’m not so interested in Informal Science Education, however. One, IMHO, leads to engagement and internal motivation, and the other is a more temporary and passive external motivational experience. But that’s just my opinion, and I look forward to being proven wrong. Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE)

What can informal science education contribute to efforts to engage publics with science-related issues? That’s the main focus of a report now available on the CAISE website, Many Experts, Many Audiences: Public Engagement with Science and Informal Science Education (PDF, 3MB). The report sums up work over the last year by a CAISE Inquiry Group led by Larry Bell of the Museum of Science, Boston, and Tiffany Lohwater of AAAS. Also contributing were Jane Lehr of TWIST (Theatre Workshop in Science, Technology, & Society, California Polytechnic), Bruce Lewenstein of Cornell University, Cynthia Needham of ICAN Productions, and Ben Wiehe of WGBH, as well as CAISE Co-PI John Falk and CAISE’s former director, Ellen McCallie (now of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh).

The group offers this report as food for thought and discussion. To that end, they will be leading a one-week online discussion starting March 23 in ASTC Connect, the online learning center, cohosted by ASTC and the New York Hall of Science’s TryScience project. The asynchronous discussion will take place in the forum called “Working with Scientists and Volunteers.” To enroll, set up an account on ASTC Connect, at connect.astc.org, and use the keycode “volts” to enroll yourself.