(no subject)

[cblj_backup]

Good morning all, and welcome to Radio Free Monday! I have a ton of links for you today, many thanks to all those who offered them for my call on Saturday, so let's get to it, shall we?

Help For Free

LOVE MEME. And the nice thing about this love meme (run by the delightful and talented arsenicjade) is that you don't put your own name in -- you start threads for your friends. Go thou and spread some love.

You've seen me link bluejeanius's artwork here before, and now she's interested in what you think -- What should Jean draw? Go and vote on what fandoms and genres she should draw in!

This is a bit silly and really should go in the "fun stuff" section at the end, but the FBI is asking the public for help in deciphering two coded messages found on a murder victim in a twelve-year-old cold case. Even aside from the daydream prestige of helping crack a code the FBI cryptanalysts couldn't, the story is pretty cool. :)

Be Aware Of Stuff:

martinius linked me to West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, "composed of musicians from Israel, Palestine, and other Arab countries." The Orchestra, based out of Spain, focuses on building bridges between the Palestinian and Israeli cultures. There's some pretty awesome video here.

Candlemark & Gleam, with whom the Cafe has enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship, has an announcement out about a new anthology called (re)Visions: Alice. One of the reasons this project is so exciting to me is that at least three (possibly all four) of the writers contributing to this anthology, which reimagines the world of Alice in Wonderland, are members of the Cafe. Two were recommended to the project by me personally, so I feel a bit of a proud godfather. The volume will be out in a couple of months, in both e-book and, for the first time in C&G's production history, bound hardback.

Fun Stuff To See:

I don't know if you guys have heard, but David Tennant and Georgia Moffett have had a daughter. tzikeh is prepared to explain the hilarity of this to everyone!

samard has OMG LAMBS. Guaranteed to make your day better!

AND NOW, DRUMROLL PLEASE:

The Geek Hooligan Project.

Links for and about programs and charities for kids!

Essays, blogs, podcasts:

bluejeans07 linked to an essay on Parenting and Batman.

edibleflowers linked to How To Grow Your Geek, a geek parenting podcast.

calliope_jones linked to Geek Mom, a blog for geek mothers (they have a companion site, Geek Dad.)

elucreh linked to Flora's Love Letter To The Smart Kids and Seperis's Child Tag on the hilarity of living with a geek child.

cerulean_sky linked to a story about A boy who wanted to be Daphne for Halloween and his mother's defence of his choice to "concerned parents". She's right, he's rocking that wig.

Mentoring, Learning, and Tutoring:

tesserae_ linked to Write Girls, an LA mentoring program which matches up women who write professionally with young girls they can mentor. (Donation Link; Shop to donate)

tanaraniel linked to 826, whose storefronts you've probably seen photos of (The Spy Store, the Time Travel Store, etc). But were you aware they run a Tutoring, student publishing, and youth writing workshop program? (Donation Link; Shop to Donate.)

keeperofqkeys linked to the Young Writers Program, a version of NaNoWriMo run by the NaNo folks aimed specifically at kids and teachers.

aliannesecunda linked to KIPP, a national network of free, open-enrollment college prep schools whose motto appears to be "Work hard. Be nice." WHICH IS FANTASTIC. (Donation Link; Shop to Donate.)

Extracurricular Arts:

While these are local organisations, they're an example of the kind of thing that (hopefully) exists in many communities, and an idea for things Geek Kids can do and places you can support.

pocketmouse linked to Adventure Theatre, a youth theatre in Washington DC that can always use a helping hand. (Donation Link.)

hedgerose linked to the Community Music School of Santa Cruz which matches up students with donated instruments, and also runs summer music camps that are specifically aimed at being Safe Spaces to learn music, particularly for queer teens. (Donation Link.)

Anon linked to the Los Angeles Children's Chorus, which provides musical/vocal education for local youth. (Donation Link; Shop to Donate.)

tinnuial linked to Arts Umbrella, which runs visual and performing arts outreach programs for kids in Vancouver, BC. (Donation Link; Shop to Donate.)

Scholarships And Competitions

frogy linked to the Scholastic Art And Writing Awards, a competitive national award which recognizes and reward creative young people. (Many Cafe members chimed in to say it's an amazing program; you can find the list of categories here.) (Donation Link.)

I linked yesterday to the Katie O'Brien Memorial Scholarship, which as far as I know is no longer active, but I would love to see more projects like this in fandom: our various help_ communities are awesome, but I'd love to see fans supporting fans when there isn't a disaster looming.

Worthy Causes:

golden_d linked to where school teachers post projects and donors give based on interest. (It's a bit like shopping for a charity!) barbed_whispers added that Tomato Nation is currently doing its Donors Choose fundraising drive, themed on SUPERHEROES.

maddoxa reminds us that schools almost always need books, and linked to Book Closeouts as a good way to pick up cheap books to give.

page_r linked to Penny Arcade's Child's Play, which provides games and toys for kids in the hospital. I know the PA boys haven't exactly been comporting themselves like decent human beings lately, but Child's Play is still a great charity to support. (Shop to Donate.)

starlingthefool linked to VSA, an international organisation that both supports the arts and educates the public about people with disabilities. (Donation Link; Volunteering.)

(Okay I have to say this, as someone who works in NFP and used branding changes as the MacGuffin for a novel, the bottom of VSA's About page has an account of their name changes which is, unintentionally I think, kind of hilarious.)

And this has been Radio Free Monday! Thank you for your time. You can always post items for my attention in comments here (or on any post) or email me at copperbadge at gmail dot com. If you're not sure how to proceed, here is a little more about what I do and how you can help. Remember, non-embedded links are love.

Comments

[adina-atl.livejournal.com]

Cool story on the cypher. I had a thought while looking at the two pages, but I don't know whether it's so incredibly obvious that no one could fail to get it, or whether it might be useful.

When I was in high school my brother and I played around with cyphers, and I came up with one easy one that he was never able to crack. It was simple substitution, with each letter replaced by the square of it's number--A = 1, B = 4, C = 9, D = 16, Z = 676. But the perfect square numbers were interspersed with non-square numbers, which were meaningless. As I wrote with the cypher, I quickly memorized the squares, but tended to use the same set of non-squares repeatedly, because it was easy to remember that they weren't squares, so frequency analysis didn't work--the most common number, which frequency analysis suggests would be E, was in fact a meaningless filler.

The cypher was not, I think, intended to communicate with anyone--these were notes to himself. Who writes quite so verbosely in notes to himself? You write what you need to remember--noon, milk/eggs/flour, $5000 to Kyle, not a whole fricking page. I suspect that most of these two pages is filler, in other words--filler that the writer knew how to ignore.

[azure-chaos.livejournal.com]

Or plot bunnies for his next fanfic lol.

I think the FBI could be quite disappointed by the contents of the notes. Times like this you wish people like Neal & Mozzie were real lol. Mind you, you cyphering is pretty impressive.

Nate

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

I imagine they looked at that, but god only knows what goes through the minds of professional cryptographers. It's a good idea, though.

[illian.livejournal.com]

And very nearly a Sam Free Monday to boot.

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

LJ, man, it hates our joy.

[illian.livejournal.com]

Bow down to your Russian cybernetic overlords!

[butterbuns.livejournal.com]

As an aside, about the DDoS; I am facepalm.

http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/it_telecom/news/66202/Livejournal_subjected_to_DDoS_hack_attack

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Wow, way to make what appeared to be a boring technoprank EXCITING!!

One for the 'just fun' pile!

[aunty_marion]

If only I'd spotted it sooner and been able to upload it sooner ... *now* we know what you moonlight as!

Re: One for the 'just fun' pile!

[aunty_marion]

Should have said, in elucidation: that's taken from Radio Times (TV listings magazine in the UK), details are for a programme on BBC2 tomorrow evening. The magazine included a 'scratch & sniff' card with various repulsive mediaeval smells on it (supposedly - I haven't tried it!).

Re: One for the 'just fun' pile!

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah! Sam Starbuck is the Other Sam, she works for the Beeb and does all kinds of cool stuff that gets her more hits than me on Google. :D

[cerulean-sky.livejournal.com]

I am somewhat ashamed to say that it's only occurred to me now to mention the Alpha, A Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Workshop for Young Writers (http://alpha.spellcaster.org). Obviously, many geeks enjoy these genres, and some even like to write in it. I think they've had students as young as 12 and as old as 19? It's 10 days in the summer, ending with a SciFi/Fantasy con (Confluence (http://www.parsec-sff.org/confluence/)) at the end and is great fun and incredibly useful. I myself attended 2004 and 2005.

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

Oooh, great stuff! I will RFM next week :)

[(Anonymous)]

Sooooooooo OT, but is LJ not letting anyone else log in? --eccentrikita

[(Anonymous)]

Login fail for me too: 'Firefox has failed to establish a connection.' Makes sense to shut down that sector if the DDoS is coming from a logged in account.

-- Twirly

[(Anonymous)]

Okay, it hasn't worked for me in Chrome or when I dug out IE, so. Not my computer. Thanks!

[arsenicjade.livejournal.com]

Thanks, you. LJ decided to contribute to the cause by going down for ten hours. I feel like I must have been a rampaging serial killer in a past life.

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

I BET YOU KICKED KITTENS.

[arsenicjade.livejournal.com]

AND LAUGHED WHEN BABY LAMBS FELL TO THE GROUND.

[taerowyn.livejournal.com]

OMG Seperis's child tag is hilarious! I'm fairly certain my neighbors are now scared of the cackling that was emanating from my apartment just now.

[sharksdontsleep.livejournal.com]

Um, not to nitpick: I really enjoyed the child-centered nature of this post, but KIPP may be a network of college prep schools, which it is, and its motto is 'Work Hard, Be Nice,' but there's a lot more to it.

The KIPP model is based on (pretty unproven) assertions about how students learn; is aimed at busting teachers unions lobbying for things like fair working hours (like, less than 12-hour days); and kicks out a high number of students, particularly black male students, to maintain its high test scores.

I teach students who have come through the KIPP system, and they struggle with basic writing and analysis, because they've been so test-prepped that they can't think. I haven't seen their college graduation rates, (not acceptance, but the number of students who make it through in five or fewer years), but I can't imagine they're better than the neighborhood schools KIPP claims to be better than.

Please, don't endorse giving KIPP money until you know about the school, its propaganda (ie. "Waiting for Superman," which was hogwash), and its aims to corporatize public schools.

[queenbookwench.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's basically what I was going to say!

However, I have met a lot of really talented and dedicated KIPP teachers in my work as a librarian, so they do have some good things going.

"Work Hard, Be Nice" really is an awesome motto, though.

[sharksdontsleep.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this is one of those things where I'm opposed to an organization, not its employees, except to the extent where their union-busting impinges on my ability to work in a (semi-)reasonable working environment.

And the motto is from Rafe Esquith, so not original to KIPP. His book (Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire) is a pretty good read, though.

[azure-chaos.livejournal.com]

Kinda sounds like the 'Academies' that have popped up in the UK over the last 5 years or so. Are their head teachers/principals also on ridiculously high salaries?

[sharksdontsleep.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure, but inclination is to say yes. Their acolytes certainly are. Over here we call them 'charters,' but probably the same model.

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

That's good to know -- I wondered, but I didn't see anything that pinged suspiciously on my radar, and I didn't have time to google everything. Thanks for the info, though -- I'll link to this in next week's RFM.

[sharksdontsleep.livejournal.com]

Yeah, these aren't things that a simple google would find: KIPP has a bunch of great press, a 'documentary' (again self-serv

ing propaganda) and a whole lot of goodwill from a whole lot of rich people. But the organization is definitely more controversial than it appears - and gets donations in addition to the same per-pupil funding as public schools in order require teachers to work 12-hour days and a bunch of other questionable labor practices. So, yeah, sorry to type your ear off, but this is something that gets my blood up.

Thanks!

[lilyayl.livejournal.com]

Might also want to point out the possible attrition rate problems, the lower ELL/SWD populations, and the fact that KIPP withdraws support from schools that don't meet the standards.

[firynze.livejournal.com]

SCHOLASTIC ART AND WRITING.

*happy sigh*

That competition was the cause of the only bright spots in my high school career, I swear.

[knitchick1979.livejournal.com]

http://community.livejournal.com/travelingduckie/

My Relay for Life team is sending around a Traveling Duckie, who this year is modeled after the Brigadier in Nicholas Courtney's honor, and we'd love more people to spread the word and also sign up to host the duckie! :)

(Our team page is at http://main.acsevents.org/goto/TeamGEEK )


Thank you! :)

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

OH MY GOD. This is FANTASTIC.

[aliannesecunda.livejournal.com]

... I'm being mainly serious when I say, what about a Cafe scholarship? Possibly partnered with Candlemark&Gleam? It could be awarded for writing or art or other worthy pursuits, and it could be to help offset time spent on creative endeavors. (I'm stealing this from Wendy Wasswestien Prize - http://www.tdf.org/TDF_NewsDetailsPage.aspx?id=86 - which is hoped to "ease financial pressures on the recipient and provide her with national exposure and encouragement").

In a similar vein? I understand if you might not be comfortable running such a thing/have time to run such a thing. But it could be an open paypal type thing, with the donations from each year getting awarded out for the next. It could be an award with a monetary prize, if a 'scholarship' name carries too much weight.

I dunno. I might be overthinking this. But at the same time, I remember you mentioning there are high school cafe members, and wouldn't it be awesome if we could help them out? Those are just my thinkythoughts. It might be implausible... but then again, it might just be plausible. I would love to help anyone brainstorm on this (and/or thrown around hypothetical ideas as a planning game. I like planning games.).

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

I've considered it -- a cafe charity, anyway -- and it's not so much that I don't want to do one as that I don't have the time to run one, combined with the fact that I already bombard people with charitable requests once a week. I'd rather disseminate information, I think -- it's a little easier on everyone involved. It's a good idea though.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

The Katie scholarship has been dormant si ce 2008 - but thank you so much for remembering it and mentioning it. We would lve to do it again - one if not three - for our 10th anniversary this summer, but we're still working through the details.

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

That's great to hear! Let me know when/if it goes live and I will boost it.