Charter

It seems that even on this, the most depressing of days, I have to hear about The War of the Charter, a topic as illustrative of people working against their own self interest as the election of...that. Charter schools and the CA proposition that supports them are important for this, and possibly only this reason: they provide a space to experiment within the confines of a bureaucracy. That bureaucracy--the public school system--will not otherwise do more than cautiously increment and thus can evolve at only a glacial pace. That pace is in no way well matched to the rate of change in the environment--social, business, Earth--for which the school is intended to prepare its students. It is almost certainly the case that the mainstream schooling your child is receiving is inadequate to the challenges we are facing. Change, and the experiments that drive change, is therefore sorely needed.

In business these days the inability of large organizations to innovate successfully is a simmering, sometimes boiling, concern. As one former Yahoo executive mournfully noted, "When you do innovation in a large company, the immune system will come and attack you." When I think of the history of our own long-running MAP educational experiment I observe parental T-cells in action, seeking, with less or more poisonous vigor, to destroy the alien body within. Certainly that accurately describes the narrow-minded response of the Ross Valley School District to the current Charter petition.

Education is an unsolved problem. We should be united in our desire to solve it and supportive of those who seek to explore alternatives that don't cost the student $42,100 per annum, alternatives that, if successful, will influence classrooms throughout the Valley, perhaps throughout the country. We are indeed in the midst of an educational crisis: it's at least part of what's produced the near-majority decision to spit in the face of facts, kick meritocracy in its striving ass, and elect...that. You may, in the overused argot of Facebook progressives, stand with Ross Valley Schools. In doing so, you might preserve a precious few dollars for a gym teacher or library book. Neither will help your child find a role in the coming society. A charter school, on the other hand, just might.

Surveillance self-defense

EFF's SSD logo: https://ssd.eff.org/en

A shout-out to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (I donate, do you?) and to their tireless efforts to get us all to use communications technology more sensibly. EFF provides the total overview for current best practice, but what I'd particularly encourage you to do is:

1. Use two-factor authentication wherever possible.
2. Use a non-default (no 1212!) code on your mobile device, and don't share it.
3. Communicate using using Signal (how to: Android; how to: iPhone), which provides end-to-end encryption, thereby preventing anyone from reading your messages or listening to your calls without possession of (or previous install of malware on) your device. No, your normal texting, Skype, phone, whatever does not do this: though much communications is encrypted in transit it is typically an open channel between your device and the first hop provider, which means that provider (e.g., Comcast, your phone company) has (and can and does share, either upon government request or by whoopsies) access to the content of your messages. (WhatsApp friends: though WhatsApp does provide E2E encryption Facebook now owns that app and you know better than to trust Faceboo, right?)
4. Do most of your surfing via a privacy-protecting browser (right now I use Tor on my personal desktop--how to: Windows; how to: Mac--and Ghostery on my phone; this last is less about avoiding snoops and more about throwing a stick in the spokes of the Attention Economy).

Some of this is security-related, and some of it is for the sake of anonymity. Significantly, it's not just your anonymity that is preserved by your use of encryption, proxying, and the like: the more people who behave this way the harder it becomes to deanonymize anyone. Think of it as protest or protection, as you like, but get on it.