nam that course

Vietnam offers free Marxism degrees to draw takers

(free re-education! I wonder if they have any online courses.)

CHRIS BRUMMITT, AP

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Market forces are working against college degrees in Marx, Lenin and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, where the Communist government has resorted to offering free tuition to attract students.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung signed a decree last month giving free tuition to students agreeing to take four-year courses on Marxism-Leninism and the thoughts of Ho Chi Minh, the country's revolutionary hero, at state-run universities.

Students have been shunning such degrees because employers are not interested in it, said Pham Tan Ha, head of admission and training at Ho Chi Minh City Social and Human Sciences University. Degrees in subjects like communications, tourism, international relations and English are more popular because students believe "they will have better chances of employment and better pay when they graduate," he said.

Students who study certain medical specialties such as tuberculosis and leprosy also will get a free ride under the decree. Ordinarily they would have to pay the equivalent of about $200 a year for tuition.

Currently, all Vietnamese students must take at least three classes in Marxist-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh studies, but few go beyond that minimum requirement.

Vietnam is run by a Communist regime but embraced free-market reforms in the 1980s. These days, the country's past is mostly apparent in its large and inefficient state-owned sector, a repressive state apparatus, the occasional Soviet-era statue or building and lingering alliances with other leftist countries.

Getting a good job — rather than the nuances of a discredited political and economic ideology that runs counter to the capitalism coursing through the country's towns and cities — is the primary concern of most young Vietnamese and their families.

More than 60 percent of the country's 90 million people are under 30, a demographic sweet spot that can lead to fast economic growth in developing countries. Competition for well-paying jobs on graduation is intense among the around 500, 000 graduates who enter the job market each year.

Many employers, among them multinationals looking to staff factories or service industries, complain about the quality of graduates that Vietnamese universities are producing. There are many private universities alongside the state-run system, but for those with money, studying overseas is considered the best option.

Duong Van Quang, a second-year student at the Hanoi University of Pharmacy, said students wanting to join the government bureaucracy, especially in rural areas, were the most likely to take a degree in Marxist-Lenin philosophy. He felt it unfair that they should get a free education, regardless of the subject.

Others met over lunch hour in the capital, Hanoi, weren't enthused by the subjects either.

"Studying Marxism and Leninism is rather dry and many students don't like it," said 23-year-old Tran The Anh, a fifth-year student. "The number of students studying these courses is very modest because many of them believe that it is difficult to find a job after graduation."

Phan Thi Trang, another pharmaceutical student, conceded that the subjects might be interesting if she studied them further. But she'd had enough of them for now.

"They are just not applicable to my daily life," she said

iran nukes?

Incoming top Iran diplomat backs 'nuclear rights'

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's incoming foreign minister says he will not back down from fighting for Iran's right to maintain its disputed nuclear program.

Mohammad Javad Zarif made the remarks during a Tuesday confirmation hearing before parliament, expected to approve his appointment later this week.

Zarif said Iran's diplomatic apparatus under him "will not withdraw one iota" of support for the nation's 'nuclear rights,' but simultaneously boost relations with countries in the region and world. State TV broadcast his speech live.

The comment by Zarif, proposed by Iran's new President Hasan Rouhani, is partly seen as a move to deflect criticism by hardliners who accuse him of being overly friendly toward the West.

The West suspects Tehran's nuclear program has a military dimension, a charge Iran denies.

(so it’s back to this,” we want nukes but we swear we won’t  hurt anybody,” sure we’d be much more willing to believe this if it weren’t for all the burning American flags and chanting “death to Israel ,” I’m sure we’d all feel a lot more ok with Iran having Nuclear materials if there was less of the other stuff. Sorry Iran but the image we have here as Americans is that you rabidly hate us and our allies and would relish the ability to nuke us into the stone age with you. )

WTF

Russell Simmons sorry for Harriet Tubman sex video

NEW YORK (AP) — Russell Simmons is apologizing for a parody video of Harriet Tubman in a sex tape that appeared on his All Def Digital YouTube channel.

The clip features an actress portraying Tubman having sex with her white slave master as someone films it so the abolitionist can bribe her boss. The "Harriet Tubman Sex Tape" video was posted Wednesday.

The 55-year-old Simmons, founder of Def Jam Records, writes Thursday that he "can now understand why so many people are upset." He said he removed the video after a call from the NAACP.

Simmons adds that he doesn't condone violence against women and that he's "sincerely sorry" to those offended by the clip. Though Simmons removed the video, it still lives online.

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NJ governor signs ban on gay conversion therapy

ANGELA DELLI SANTI, AP

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Gov. Chris Christie signed a bill Monday barring licensed therapists from trying to turn gay teenagers straight, making New Jersey the second state to ban so-called conversion therapy, along with California.

The bill passed both houses of the New Jersey Legislature with bipartisan support in June. Assemblyman Tim Eustace, who sponsored the bill and is openly gay, described the therapy as "an insidious form of child abuse."

In a note accompanying the bill, Christie said he believes people are born gay and that homosexuality is not a sin. That view is inconsistent with his Catholic faith, which teaches that homosexual acts are sins.

The Republican governor also said the health risks of trying to change a child's sexual orientation, as identified by the American Psychological Association, outweigh concerns over the government setting limits on parental choice.

"Government should tread carefully into this area," he said in the note, "and I do so here reluctantly."

"However, I also believe that on the issues of medical treatment for children we must look to experts in the field to determine the relative risks and rewards," Christie said, citing a litany of potential ill effects of trying to change sexual orientation, including depression and suicide. "I believe that exposing children to these health risks without clear evidence of benefits that outweigh these serious risks is not appropriate."

(this is a bold move on Christie’s part but sets him up nicely as moderate voice of reason which could translate to lot of political captial)

Gay rights activists applauded the ban but pushed for more.

"It is our truest hope that the governor will realize, as the majority of the legislature and a super-majority of the pubic have realized, that the best way to ensure lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender youth are protected from the abuse of being ostracized is to provide them with equality," Troy Stevenson, executive director of the state's largest gay rights group, Garden State Equality, said in a statement.

Christie previously vetoed gay marriage legislation. He has said he supports the state's civil union law, which was enacted to give gay couples the benefits of marriage but not the title. Gay couples have since sued, claiming that the law provides unequal treatment to same-sex couples. Their lawyers say the U.S. Supreme Court ruling granting federal benefits to gay married couples strengthens their case in state court, while Christie administration lawyers say the federal government should recognize the state's civil union law as the equivalent to marriage. A trial court decision is expected next month.

Gay rights groups say the practice of conversion therapy is damaging to young people because it tells them that it's not acceptable to be whoever they are.

Some social conservatives framed the debate as a parental rights issue, saying a ban on the counseling would limit the ability of parents to do what they think is best for their children.

The idea of conversion therapy is an old one that has increasingly drawn criticism for its methods. Last year, four gay men sued a Jersey City group for fraud, saying its program included making them strip naked and attack effigies of their mothers with baseball bats.

Lawmakers heard horror stories from some during hearings on the ban, including Brielle Goldani of Toms River, who testified she underwent electric shocks and was given drugs to induce vomiting after being sent to an Ohio camp at age 14 to become straight.

But, they also heard from Tara King, a Brick-based counselor, who said she should be allowed to "fix" what patients, even under-aged clients, want fixed.

( and if the kids truly desired straightness they wouldn’t need “therapy” to get it, if they had any choice about it at all. And since I can’t choose to be gay I can only assume gay kids can’t choose to be straight.)

Silicon Valley keenly awaits latest Lego robot kit

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MARTHA MENDOZA, AP
1 day ago

In this Aug. 14, 2013, photo, children look at a computer presentation on h...

SAN JOSE, California (AP) — Few are more excited about Lego's new Mindstorms sets rolling out next month than Silicon Valley engineers.

Many of them were drawn to the tech sector by the flagship kits that came on the market in 1998, introducing computerized movement to the traditional snap-together toy blocks and allowing the young innovators to build their first robots. Now, 15 years later, those robot geeks are entrepreneurs and designers, and the colorful plastic bricks have an outsized influence in their lives.

Techies tinker at Lego play stations in workplaces. Engineers mentor competitive Lego League teams. Designers use them to mock up larger projects ideas. And executives stand Lego creations on their desks alongside family photos.

"Everyone I work with played with them as children. We sit around talking Lego. It's a shared common experience," said Travis Schuh, who reaches into his bin of plastic blocks when he needs a quick prototype at the Silicon Valley medical robotic firm where he works.

The new Mindstorms sets, on sale Sept. 1, are simpler for the younger crowd and more versatile for sophisticated users than two earlier versions.

The sets are designed for kids over 10 and make it easy to build basic, remote-controlled robots, including a cobra-like snake that snaps Lego brick fangs. Some shoot balls, others drive along color-coded lines.

But for $349, far more expensive than typical building toys, customers get a much more complex and powerful system.

"There's actually a lot of engineering that goes into Lego bricks and the systems you can prototype out of them are pretty sophisticated," says Stanford University engineering professor Christian Gerdes, who uses them in his classroom.

Professional hackers will also find plenty to do with the new Mindstorms, as the open source software uses Linux for the first time, and controller apps are integrated for tablets and mobile phones.

San Francisco-based software engineer Will Gorman is one of those adult users. He has torn apart Mindstorms kits to create a Lego toilet flusher, a Wii-playing robot that bowled a perfect game and a Lego Mars Curiosity Rover.

"I don't consider myself an adult really," said the 36-year-old father of two last week, setting up yet another creation on a table in a sunny Redwood City library overlooking San Francisco's bay wetlands.

ProtoTank co-founder Adam Ellsworth, whose headquarters are on the third floor of TechShop San Francisco, says, "there is a culture of design in the Silicon Valley, and Lego bricks are how so many of us started."

"This place is just one big Lego station," he added, raising his voice above the buzz of laser cutters and 3-D printers. "Taking an idea, a concept, and finding the right way to turn it into something real, that's fundamentally what you're doing with Lego bricks."

Denmark-based Lego first sold their plastic bricks 55 years ago, and watched them grow into one of the world's most popular toys. But company officials say Mindstorms, designed for children but quickly snapped up by adults, changed their market.

"In the last 15 years, we have worked hard to balance the needs and wants of this shadow market while at the same time engaging kids," said Michael McNally, a brand director at LEGO Systems, Inc.

Kellen Asercion, a Stanford University engineering graduate student, first snapped Lego bricks together around the time he started kindergarten, and he was still building when he graduated high school.

"Lego sets are almost single-handedly responsible for my interest in engineering," he said.

Many Bay Area engineers also grew up competing in the First Lego League, which also launched in 1998 with 200 teams. Since then the league has expanded — last year more than 280,000 children around the world, ages 6-18, participated.

Organizers expect 600 teams participating in Northern California this autumn.

"We have a culture that only celebrates superheroes in the worlds of entertainment and sports. We need to create superheroes in the world of innovation," said Dean Kamen, who founded FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), which includes the First Lego League.

Nagy Hakim first played with Mindstorms at a robotics summer camp when he was in 6th grade. Since then, the college-bound 18-year-old from Santa Clara, California, has joined — and even mentored — Lego leagues.

Is this something he's going to grow out of?

"Time will tell," laughs Hakim. This fall he heads to Olin College of Engineering in Boston, where professors posit theoretical Lego problems, students are encouraged to mentor Lego teams and the library stocks Mindstorms kits.

Phillies' Triple-A affiliate offers free funeral

MICHAEL RUBINKAM, AP

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — From the minor-league baseball club that gave you the world's first urinal gaming system comes a promotion that's more 6 feet under than it is over the top: One "lucky" fan will win a free funeral package.

The Triple A affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies, the Lehigh Valley IronPigs, plans to announce the winner of its latest, and perhaps most bizarre, fan giveaway at Tuesday night's game in Allentown.

Minor-league clubs are notorious for the wacky promotions they run to help put fans in the seats, and the IronPigs are no exception. Earlier this year, the team boasted about the new gaming system it had installed in men's restrooms at Coca-Cola Park.

But a free funeral? Talk about burying the competition.

"It's one of our best out-of-the-box promotions. Or maybe I should say one of our best 'in-the-box' promotions," quipped IronPigs General Manager Kurt Landes.

Fans had to submit an essay describing their ideal funeral and explain why they deserved a free one. More than 50 essays were turned in.

Some of the contestants took a lighthearted approach. A fan of movie Westerns wrote how his funeral would feature the "William Tell Overture" and a photo of the Lone Ranger. A woman joked that she wanted bouncers to remove mourners who weren't sufficiently mournful.

Others were far more serious. One fan, recently diagnosed with ALS, wrote how his family is watching his "life quickly draining from my body. No one was prepared, emotionally or financially, for the loss or to prepare a final memorial."

The winner of the essay contest, to be announced during the sixth inning, gets a casket, embalming or cremation, hearse, headstone, flowers and a funeral or memorial service, all valued at nearly $10,000. A nearby funeral home is the sponsor.

Lest they be accused of poor taste, the IronPigs have opted to call Tuesday night's giveaway "Celebration of Life Night." Grim reapers and tombstones are out, angelic music and a release of doves at home plate in.

"It won't become Halloween," Landes said.

First reaction: lab-made burger short on flavor

(we can make a jelly bean taste like popcorn or newly mowed grass, we can make beaver ass taste like raspberry and we can’t make meat taste like meat? I’m not buyin’ it,we just need to try harder.)

MARIA CHENG, AP

LONDON (AP) — They bit, they chewed, but had hoped for more flavor.

Two volunteers who participated in the first public frying of hamburger grown in a lab said Monday that it had the texture of meat but was short of flavor because of the lack of fat.

Mark Post, whose team at Maastricht University in the Netherlands developed the burger, hopes that making meat in labs could eventually help feed the world and fight climate change. That goal is many years distant, at best.

Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google, appeared on a video shown at the event and announced that he funded the 250,000-euro ($330,000) project because of his concern for animal welfare.

"I would say it's close to meat. I miss the salt and pepper," said Austrian nutritionist Hanni Ruetzler, one of the volunteer tasters. Both shunned the bun and sliced tomatoes to concentrate on the meat.

"The absence is the fat, it's a leanness to it, but the bite feels like a conventional hamburger," said U.S. journalist Josh Schonwald. He added that he had rarely tasted a hambuger, as he did on Monday, "without ketchup or onions or jalapenos or bacon."

Monday's taste test, coming after five years of research, is a key step toward making lab meat a culinary phenomenon. Post called it "a good start."

Brin expressed high hopes for the technology.

"We're trying to create the first cultured beef hamburger. From there I'm optimistic we can really scale by leaps and bounds," he said on the video.

Post said it's crucial that the burger has the "look, feel and taste like the real thing."

Despite the tasters concern about flavor, scientists say that can be tweaked.

"Taste is the least (important) problem since this could be controlled by letting some of the stem cells develop into fat cells," said Stig Omholt, director of biotechnology at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Adding fat to the burgers this way would probably be healthier than getting it from naturally chunky cows, Omholt said before Monday's test. He was not involved in the project.

Post and colleagues made the meat from the muscle cells of two organic cows. The cells were put into a nutrient solution to help them develop into muscle tissue, growing into small strands of meat.

It took nearly 20,000 strands to make a single 140-gram (5-ounce) patty, which for Monday's taste test was seasoned with salt, egg powder, breadcrumbs, red beet juice and saffron.

"I'm a vegetarian, but I would be first in line to try this," said Jonathan Garlick, a stem cell researcher at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine in Boston. He has used similar techniques to make human skin but wasn't involved in the burger research.

Experts say new ways of producing meat are needed to satisfy growing carnivorous appetites without exhausting resources. By 2050, the Food and Agriculture Organization predicts global meat consumption will double as more people in developing countries can afford it. Raising animals destined for the dinner table takes up about 70 percent of all agricultural land.

The animal rights group PETA has thrown its support behind the lab-meat initiative.

"As long as there's anybody who's willing to kill a chicken, a cow or a pig to make their meal, we are all for this," said Ingrid Newkirk, PETA's president and co-founder. "Instead of the millions and billions (of animals) being slaughtered now, we could just clone a few cells to make burgers or chops."

Post and his colleagues had tasted the meat in the lab, and he said they cooked a test burger on Sunday.

"The first (lab-made) meat products are going to be very exclusive," said Isha Datar, director of New Harvest, an international nonprofit that promotes meat alternatives. "These burgers won't be in Happy Meals before someone rich and famous is eating them."

Only one patty was used for the taste test, and the testers each took less than half. Post said he would take the leftovers home and let his kids have a taste.