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Common Core, the initiative that claims to more
accurately measure K-12 student knowledge in English and math, also
encourages children to step up their “critical thinking.” That
didn’t stop Education Secretary Arne Duncan, one of Common Core’s
salesmen, from telling a group of school superintendents last week
that it is “fascinating” to see opposition to the initiative coming
from “white suburban moms who—all of a sudden, their child isn’t as
brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite
as good as they thought they were.” Duncan’s comments, writes David
Harsanyi, overlook a very real achievement gap in American
education, and were part of a pattern of undermining innovation and
attacking choice.

View this article.

Common Core, the initiative that claims to more
accurately measure K-12 student knowledge in English and math, also
encourages children to step up their “critical thinking.” That
didn’t stop Education Secretary Arne Duncan, one of Common Core’s
salesmen, from telling a group of school superintendents last week
that it is “fascinating” to see opposition to the initiative coming
from “white suburban moms who—all of a sudden, their child isn’t as
brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite
as good as they thought they were.” Duncan’s comments, writes David
Harsanyi, overlook a very real achievement gap in American
education, and were part of a pattern of undermining innovation and
attacking choice.

View this article.

Yesterday, the Philadelphia City Council approved
a ban on the manufacturing of guns with a 3D printer.

Philadelphia magazine
reports that councilman Kenyatta Johnson, who crafted the
legislation, is unaware of any actual 3D gun manufacturers in
the city, and in a surprisingly earnest statement Johnson’s office
explained that “It’s all pre-emptive. It’s just based upon internet
stuff out there.”

The
legislation, which bans anyone without a federal firearms
manufacturing license from producing 3D-printed guns, was passed
unanimously by 10-member council. If the mayor approves the bill,
Philadelphia will be the first city to implement this kind of
ban.

Johnson, who is a longtime
advocate of restrictions on gun ownership and use, previously
said “You can use certain types of plastics and certain types of
other material to replicate anything,” a power that if honed by 3D
gun enthusiasts could be “catastrophic.” He hopes that restricting
these firearms will be curtail violent crime in Philadelphia.

It’s an ambitious goal. The Department of Homeland Security, for
example, has suggested that stopping the production of 3D-printed
weapons is a
virtually impossible task. And criminals may have little
incentive to buy or build plastic 3-D printed guns like the

Liberator, which is likely to complete just a few shots before
breaking. The production of
metal 3-D printed guns may change that, but as
Philadelphia magazine notes, the equipment needed to
manufacture one of these firearms can set you back $8000, whereas a
good old-fashioned black market handgun may cost as little as $300.
If a criminal is looking to inflict the catastrophic damage that
Johnson fears, they would not need an expensive, futuristic gun,
but as Reason‘s J.D. Tuccille
highlights, a coffee mug, few dollars worth hygienic
products, and a working knowledge of basic chemistry.

There also remains question as to how well the bill will hold
up, as Pennsylvania law states
that “no county, municipality or township may in any manner
regulate the lawful ownership, possession, transfer or
transportation of firearms, ammunition or ammunition components
when carried or transported for purposes not prohibited by the laws
of this Commonwealth.”

Johnson countered this,
telling Phily.com that “the prohibition that city ordinances
can’t overcome as it relates to state legislation is primarily
ownership, transfer of a firearm. This goes to manufacturing.” He
assured that “We believe that if there is a challenge in the court
system, it will be something we’ll be able to defeat.”

This story is mostly for Matt Welch, who likes baseball, goats,
and diapers (in that order, according to his Wikipedia page).

Former baseball slugger, Madonna boy toy, and steroid enthusiast
Jose Canseco recently bought some goats, put diapers on them, and
then…things got weird:

A couple hours after acquiring his new goats, Canseco was pulled
over. 

Apparently, the officer got a kick out of Canseco’s new animals
in the backseat.

Read more here.

And if you care about the power of teh Interweb
and the radical, non-filtered speech acts it enables, follow
Canseco (the more admirable half of the Bash Brothers!) on
Twitter.

Past episodes of “more signs we’re living in a Philip K. Dick
novel” include the strange case of
Fetus-Free Pepsi, the creation of an online dating
service built around Atlas Shrugged, the al Qaeda plot to
kidnap the
star of Cinderella Man, and of course the entire career of
Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Mandatory reading (unless you’re already tripping balls on CAN-D
and Perky Pat layouts): “Which
Philip K. Dick Story Are We in Today?”

This story is mostly for Matt Welch, who likes baseball, goats,
and diapers (in that order, according to his Wikipedia page).

Former baseball slugger, Madonna boy toy, and steroid enthusiast
Jose Canseco recently bought some goats, put diapers on them, and
then…things got weird:

A couple hours after acquiring his new goats, Canseco was pulled
over. 

Apparently, the officer got a kick out of Canseco’s new animals
in the backseat.

Read more here.

And if you care about the power of teh Interweb
and the radical, non-filtered speech acts it enables, follow
Canseco (the more admirable half of the Bash Brothers!) on
Twitter.

Past episodes of “more signs we’re living in a Philip K. Dick
novel” include the strange case of
Fetus-Free Pepsi, the creation of an online dating
service built around Atlas Shrugged, the al Qaeda plot to
kidnap the
star of Cinderella Man, and of course the entire career of
Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Mandatory reading (unless you’re already tripping balls on CAN-D
and Perky Pat layouts): “Which
Philip K. Dick Story Are We in Today?”

WARSAW-“This COP is already
locked in failure,” declared Anjali Appadurai at a press briefing
as the 19th Conference of the Parties (COP-19) of the U.N. Climate
Change Convention (UNFCCC) slouched toward its close on Friday
night. She added, “This COP has delivered nothing.” As it happens,
Appadurai was one of the activists who participated in the
“massive” walkout of self-styled civil society at the conference on
Thursday, but there she was on the podium at as representative of
the
Third World Network. Never mind. The environmental ministers
and diplomats are still at it trying shape some kind of deal.

So what would “success” look like to Appadurai and other climate
change activists here at the Warsaw conference? First, the rich
countries would have to admit their
historical responsibility for damaging the climate and commit
to cutting their greenhouse emissions by 40 percent below what they
emitted in 1990. Currently, developed nations have committed to
cuts amounting to about 18 percent by 2020.

Second, it is not enough that the rich countries promised in
2009 at the Copenhagen climate change conference to “mobilize” $100
billion per year in climate change funding for poor countries
beginning in 2020. Meena Raman, another representative of the Third
World Network, cited the demands from the Like-Minded Developing
Countries for $70 billion in climate change funding by 2015. The
poor countries are also adamant that the billions “mobilized” by
rich countries should not come from the private sector: that’s just
way too uncertain. Poor country governments will accept only public
funds in the form of grants.

Citing the awful devastation wreaked on the Philippines by
Typhoon Haiyan, the poor country negotiators claim is that it’s far
too late to mitigate or adapt to climate change. It’s now time to
pay for the effects of climate change. So the third demand from
poor countries is that the rich countries set up a separate funding
mechanism in addition to the annual $100 billion already promised
to compensate poor countries for the
loss and damage caused by climate change.

The rich countries have been resisting all three of these
demands. Instead, they are focusing on how to reach some kind of
binding global treaty at the COP in Paris in 2015.
Under that agreement all countries, rich and poor, are supposed to
make nationally determined mitigation commitments. That is, each
country is supposed tell the rest of the world how and by how much
they plan to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions after the new
treaty comes into force in 2020. Poor countries counter that they
will not make any such commitments until the rich countries make
firm climate change funding commitments.

The rich countries led by U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern
would count the conference a “success” if it achieved two things.
First, negotiators would establish uniform greenhouse gas
mitigation performance standards that could be compared directly
across all countries. Second, the conference would adopt a
timetable in which each country is expected to make its initial
mitigation pledges public and available for criticism, preferably
by late 2014 or early 2015. The rich countries also do not want to
create a new loss and damage bureaucracy, but have those issues
handled under the already existing adaptation provisions of the
UNFCCC.

The COP was supposed to close at 6 pm (CET) but the negotiations
continue and are expected to run well into the night. My final
dispatch from the Warsaw climate conference, reporting on what it
delivered, if anything, will appear on Monday