Author: Robert Richardson

Debuting in 1866, Vernors ginger soda is one of the oldest soft drinks in the United States. Though it never earned nationwide popularity, Vernors has garnered generations of loyal fans in its native Detroit. In addition to simply sipping the soda, Detroiters still turn to the fizzy brew as a cure-all for everything from nausea to headaches. There’s even a Vernors Collectors Club, with some members possessing more than 1,000 pieces of memorabilia bearing variations of the classic green and yellow logo.Invented by pharmacist James Vernor, the ginger soda is a relic of the drugstore-cum-soda-fountain era. For years after its debut, customers could sip Vernor’s signature drink—known for its effervescence and vanilla, lightly spiced flavors—only at the soda fountain adjacent to his pharmacy. Eventually, as the beverage’s popularity increased, Vernor started supplying his syrup to other fountains and opened a bottling plant. Even after his death in 1927, Vernor’s company continued to grow. Throughout the 1940s and ’50s, a sprawling new bottling plant and soda fountain attracted throngs of locals and visitors, who wanted to sip ginger soda and the buzzed-about beverage known as the Boston Cooler, which blended Vernors with vanilla ice cream.

Source: Vernors Ginger Soda – Gastro Obscura

The RYA Racing Rules of Sailing 2021-2024 books are now available to pre-order from the RYA web shop.Updated every four years, the Racing Rules of Sailing are compulsory for racing sailors all over the world.As well as the full racing rules, the RYA Racing Rules of Sailing 2021-2024 (order code YR1, RRP £10.99), is the only publication available that also details the RYA National Prescriptions, essential for understanding racing in the UK.The RYA also publish two further titles to help sailors understand and reference the rules with ease.The RYA Handy Guide to the Racing Rules 2021-2024 (order code YR7, RRP £4.49) is available in both print and eBook formats. A useful pocket guide and simplified view of the basic racing rules, it is essential reading if you are new to racing, or want a straightforward overview of the basic principles.The digital eBook edition is ideal for accessing the rules quickly and easily on your phone or tablet, whenever and wherever you need them.Also in the series is RYA The Racing Rules Explained 2021-2024 eBook (order code E-G80, RRP £17.99) written by Trevor Lewis, former Chair of the RYA Racing Committee, a World Sailing International Judge and acknowledged rules expert.With detailed explanations of each rule, the eBook also features case book examples from World Sailing, RYA, USA and Canada making it the most relevant title available.RYA Publications Manager, Steen Ingerslev commented: “We’re delighted to be working on the new editions of the Racing Rules of Sailing. As always, the popular series is essential reading for competitors, race officials and anyone looking to increase their Racing Rules knowledge.”We anticipate the eBook editions will be available later this month, with the print editions ready to ship in early December – in time for Christmas and ahead of the rule changes at the beginning of next year.”The new rules come into effect in January 2021, make sure you’re ready by pre-ordering your copy today.All the RYA Racing Rules of Sailing titles are available to pre-order now on the RYA web shop. RYA members can take advantage of a 15% discount on all RYA publications. The eBook editions will also be available through the RYA Books App, as well as Apple Books and Google Play Books.

Source: Pre-order your copy of the new Racing Rules of Sailing 2021-2024

International travel options for UK citizens are rapidly closing down.After the Department for Transport (DfT) imposed quarantine for arrivals from Turkey and Poland, the Foreign Office says travellers to Germany from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and and many parts of northern England are required to self-isolate when they get there.The affected areas of England are the north-east, the north-west, Yorkshire and the Humber.The same applies to travellers from elsewhere in England who have visited any of those parts of the UK within the past two weeks.Northern Ireland and Wales had already been on the German “high-risk” register.“If you have been in the designated high risk areas in the two weeks prior to [your] arrival in Germany, you are required to proceed directly to your accommodation and quarantine for 14 days or until you can show evidence of a negative test result,” reads the FCDO advice.

Source: Germany demands majority of UK arrivals enter quarantine | The Independent

At Party Beach Ski Camps, head coaches Lyndsay Strange and Marcus Caston believe that skiing should be fun. Strange, an Olympic ski coach, and Caston, a professional skier, teach the fundamentals to everyone from junior FIS racers to recreational adults during weeklong sessions at Oregon’s Mount Hood. They operate on the assumption that you won’t work hard to improve if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, so they try to foster a genuine love of the sport. Unlike more traditional race camps, the two mix big-mountain techniques, freeskiing, and hitting jumps into their campers’ days on the snow.Even if you’re more powder hound than ski racer, a little expert help can identify bad habits and make you a safer, more solid skier. Since in-person coaching is harder to come by these days, we asked Strange and Caston to lay out the core principles of good skiing for you to practice as soon as you hit the slopes.

Source: 6 Easy Ways to Be a Better Skier | Outside Online

It’s been 16 years since Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in his Harvard dorm room. And it’s been exactly 10 years since David Fincher’s movie about the company’s early days, The Social Network, hit theatersThe world has changed in ten years. There are a lot of hard seltzer brands. Email newsletters are big business. And most of the major characters in the movie have moved past their Facebook days.Here’s what those people, from the Winklevoss twins to Sean Parker, are up to now.

Source: ‘The Social Network’ Ten Years Later: Where Are They Now?

While many provincial ridings are working to secure their nomination for the Oct. 24 election the BC Liberals named their candidate, Roxanne Helme, in late June.Helme is a career lawyer who has sat on local, national and international councils. Having been declared early she’s among the more prepared BC Liberal candidates but shares the party’s disappointment in the snap election.“I’m interested in good governance and not politics, and it’s politics which has taken us into this election and at an undesirable time,” Helme said Monday. “I was looking at another year [until the election], so I’m happy enough to get on with it personally. But my neighbours are not happy with it. We had a stable government and this is just politics.”The Oak Bay-Gordon Head riding will have a new MLA as incumbent Andrew Weaver will not run again.Helme actually graduated from Oak Bay High in the same class as Weaver in 1980.

Source: Meet the Liberal candidate for Oak Bay-Gordon Head – Victoria News

Many factors contributed to students’ need for personalized accommodation and support to achieve academically during rapid transitions online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

This summer, universities around the world planned for an unprecedented back-to-school in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. In most universities, centres of teaching and learning are responsible for supporting faculty members’ teaching for more effective student learning and a high quality of education.

Our collaborative research group, based at Université Laval, Concordia University, Florida State University, University of Southern California and San Francisco State University, sought to better understand how universities planned to make sure all students would have access to online learning and be able to participate as courses moved online. Our team met remotely with staff from 19 centres in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Lebanon.

We analyzed publicly shared resources from 78 centres in 23 countries about about how instructors could transform online learning during COVID-19. We also compiled publicly available resources from these centres about ways to address educational equity in relationship to online learning.

We identified emerging best practices that many universities are recommending for improving students’ equitable access online during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. We also heard from staff at centres of teaching and learning that universities have a distance to go in understanding how to address racism online.

Educational equity

We used the Organization of Economic Co-Operation and Development’s definition of educational equity to guide our questions. We also relied on a working definition of equity in higher education:

• All students are able to achieve equal learning outcomes as they are supported by institutions, faculty and other systems to engage in the learning process.
• All students are able to receive the financial, social and academic support and guidance they need to succeed in the institutional programs, thus enabling lifelong success as well.
• All students are given access to appropriate and effective learning opportunities, and instructional resources, activities, interactions and evaluative assessment — which are differentiated according to their unique sets of characteristics and needs.

COVID-19 & student vulnerability

Staff who participated in our study identified many problems students were facing in accessing online learning. Students were working from home; some international students had returned to their home countries. Many students lacked access to a computer, the internet or adequate bandwidth to support synchronous video conferencing.

According to both publicly shared resources from centres for teaching and learning and information relayed by directors, factors accentuating student vulnerability at the onset of the pandemic included: physical and/or learning disabilities; sickness or stress due to the pandemic; issues related to technology access; students’ existing information communication competencies; official language proficiency; whether students had caregiving duties; socio-economic and immigration status; time zones; and students’ racialization or ethnicity, gender, culture and religion.

Many factors accentuated students’ need for personalized accommodation and support to achieve academically during rapid transitions online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Systemic racism

Systemic racism was brought to the forefront, particularly after the death of George Floyd in the U.S., which catalyzed global anti-racist protests and calls for systemic change. University staff from centres for teaching and learning said addressing systemic racism was a priority. Many reported they were asked to produce guidelines and recommendations to address systemic racism and inclusion in online learning environments as quickly as possible.

However, they were being cautious not to rush this process as their goal was to develop effective measures that would result in positive change, a task that many also acknowledged requires careful consideration. They had unanswered questions such as such as: How can centres for teaching and learning provide support to students experiencing racism in the classroom? How can centres help reduce systemic racism in their centres and in teaching and learning contexts? How can they spread awareness of issues of systemic racism in online contexts?https://www.youtube.com/embed/evndCfQ92s4?wmode=transparent&start=0Nicole West-Burns, director of school services at Centre for Urban Schooling, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, speaks on building critical consciousness for educational equity in video from TEDxOshawa.

An equitable future

Our analysis of online resources and discussions with staff in centres for teaching and learning revealed eight priorities from these centres to ensure an equitable and accessible online learning experience for students during the COVID-19 pandemic and into the future.

1. Create accessible materials: Ensure that documents can be easily shared and printed; share documents and materials that are compatible with assistive technologies; adopt inclusive writing, respectful and sensitive to students from different backgrounds; provide descriptions in hyperlinks and images for students with visual impairments and using screen readers; format text in easily readable colours and fonts; provide course content materials in multiple formats.

2. Choose adequate digital technologies: Use university and institutional IT department-supported digital technologies; use digital technologies available for students in different time zones and international contexts; choose tools that include accessibility features, such as text-to-speech, high-contrast themes, enlarged cursors, closed-captioning, keyboard shortcuts and alternative text.

3. Record lectures, and caption videos and audio content: Ensure the asynchronous availability of lectures; facilitate the accessibility of these lectures or any other video or audio content through captioning.

4. Adopt inclusive culturally responsive teaching: Instill equity as a value in designing learning experiences; avoid one-size-fits-all instructional designs; be aware of the risks of a “colour blind” approach as claiming not to see race may mean ignoring racism or discrimination; explicitly value all students’ experiences; design courses to activate students’ cultural capital; make sure that all students are seen, heard, respected and valued for who they are.

5. Adopt a flexible approach to student participation: Prepare for flexible timing for student assessment; discontinue traditional three-hour lectures; opt for asynchronous activities; give priority to project-based assignments in order to promote asynchronous participation; provide additional time for completing exams and other evaluations when necessary.

6. Ensure financial support and equipment: Facilitate students’ access to financial aid and technological equipment, or provide this when possible during the pandemic to students facing financial constraints, no questions asked.

7. Understand student needs: Host panels with student organizations, identity-based equity centres, LGBTQ resource centres and multicultural centres, and other student-led groups where student panellists talk about their new reality and what they want faculty to know; administer ongoing surveys to monitor students’ situations; pause and ask students about their needs, their expectations and how things are going with them — because they know best about their own situation.

8. Address systemic racism: Staff noted that as resource centres charged with supporting faculty in providing quality learning experiences and providing safe and equitable experiences for racialized students, there is more work to be done.

Our research group’s work on this subject continues. On Oct. 2 we are holding an online symposium called “Leading the Future of Higher Ed — Planning for Sustainability”.

The project was conducted as a part of the research project of the International Observatory on the societal impacts of AI and digital technology (OBVIA) regarding the societal effects of A.I. systems and digital tools deployed to combat the spread of COVID-19 and funding by the Québec Research Funds (FRQ). The project was also supported by Nadia Naffi’s Chair in Educational Leadership in Innovative Pedagogical Practices in Digital Contexts – National Bank and Ann-Louise Davidson’s Concordia University Research Chair in Maker Culture. Naffi is affiliated with OBVIA, the Centre de recherche et d’intervention sur l’éducation et la vie au travail (CRIEVAT), the Centre de recherche et d’intervention sur la réussite scolaire (CRIRES), Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology, and the Educational Informatics Lab (EILAB).

Ann-Louise Davidson, Azeneth Patino, Brian Beatty, Edem Gbetoglo, and Nathalie Duponsel do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. admitted wrongdoing and agreed to pay more than $920 million to resolve U.S. authorities’ claims of market manipulation involving two of the bank’s trading desks, the largest sanction ever tied to the illegal practice known as spoofing.Over eight years, 15 traders at the biggest U.S. bank caused losses of more than $300 million to other participants in precious metals and Treasury markets, according to court filings on Tuesday. JPMorgan admitted responsibility for the traders’ actions. The Justice Department filed two counts of wire fraud against the bank’s parent company but agreed to defer prosecution related to the charges, under a three-year deal that requires the bank to report its remediation and compliance efforts to the government.

Source: JPMorgan admits spoofing by 15 traders, 2 desks in record deal | US & Canada News | Al Jazeera

Six years ago, The Linux Foundation launched its first free online class: Introduction to Linux. Today, The Linux Foundation, announced its free Introduction to Linux training course on the edX Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) platform and had more than a million enrollments. Not bad for what Linus Torvalds called “just a hobby” operating system.ZDNET RECOMMENDSBest Linux Foundation classes in 2020: Intro to Linux, Cloud Engineer Bootcamp, and moreWant a good tech job? Then you need to know Linux and open-source software. One of the best ways to pick them up is via a Linux Foundation course.Read MoreOf course, now, that little operating system runs the web, rules supercomputing, powers the cloud, keeps Android smartphones working, and even shows up on a few desktops. What really brings people to this class, though, is good old filthy lucre. A recent Dice technology job study database found that Linux engineers and systems administrators’ salaries are paid more, on average, than their competitors. An Indeed job survey showed that the top operating system employers are looking for is Linux.  A similar study by Burning Glass, which tracks millions of job postings from across the US, also shows that companies want staffers who know Linux far more so than any other operating system. If you want a job in tech support for the rest of your life, learn Windows. If you want a career in tech, learn Linux.This class along with The Linux Foundation entry-level certification, the Linux Foundation Certified IT Associate (LFCA), can help you get started. This gives you a good working knowledge of Linux using both the graphical interface and shell across the major Linux distribution families. No prior knowledge or experience is required. Oh, and did I mention it’s free?

Source: A million students and counting have learned Linux | ZDNet