mimblr.com

Twenty-five “Earth Educators” descended upon Taylor Elementary School Thursday in their veggie-oil-powered caravan to help students plant fruit trees and dance to the “eco-beat.”
The “Earth educators” were from environmental education group Common Vision, and their visit to the Santa Maria school was a stop along the way in the group's annual Fruit Tree Tour, a 20-city tour to plant more than 1,000 fruit trees on urban campuses, while teaching children about sustainable ecology.
The program - which coincides with this week's Arbor Day celebration - includes West African agricultural drumming and Earth-conscious hip-hop.
“We wanted to tie the importance of our agricultural heritage here in the Santa Maria Valley … and it's exciting for kids to grow things and harvest them. It teaches them patience,” teacher Sally Woelper said.
In addition to her regular teaching duties at Taylor, Woelper is the faculty advisor for the school's Garden Club, and was instrumental in bringing Common Vision to the school.
The visit was made possible with a garden grant from the state and other funds, Woelper said.
El Camino Junior High also received money from the garden grant, but chose to use the funds to buy sorely needed equipment for its Garden Club.

read_more

Here are the answers to your questions for Major General William T. Lord, who runs the just-getting-off-the ground Air Force Cyber Command. Before you ask: yes, his answers were checked by both PR and security people. Also, please note that this interview is a “first,” in that Generals don’t typically take questions from random people on forums like Slashdot, and that it is being watched all the way up the chain of command into the Pentagon. Many big-wigs will read what you post here — and a lot of them are interested in what you say and may even use your suggestions to help set future recruiting and operational policies. A special “thank you” goes to Maj. Gen. Lord for participating in this experiment, along with kudos to the (necessarily anonymous) people who helped us arrange this interview.
How do we prevent “mission creep” (Score:5, Insightful)
by Jeremiah Cornelius (137)
It appears that the military is increasingly involved in areas who’s jurisdiction was once considered to be wholly in the civil domain. Use of jargon like “cyberspace” seems only to obfuscate and distract from the core issue. This appears an effort to recruit public opinion and defuse the deeper questions that strike at the heart of a free and civil society. I think that if we had a statement that “The private mails are a warfighting domain” would generate a fair amount of debate on the role of the military as opposed to the police, the function of constitutional protection of liberties, and the question of what actually constitutes a state of war.

read_more