General

Outraged by Friday’s violent crackdown by UC Davis police on peaceful student protestors, many are calling for the resignation of Chancellor Linda Katehi. An online petition begun by Assistant UCD Prof. Nathan Brown demanding the Chancellor’s immediate resignation currently has over 50,000 signatures.

The Chancellor, who ordered campus police to remove protestors, told CNN that she would not resign, and that she ordered the removal of student protestors out of concerns for their own safety. But she had little to say to the students who assembled outside a UC Davis press conference on Saturday. The Chancellor avoided leaving the building for over 2 hours because she felt threatened by the students outside. The video below shows Katehi walking to her car, through a path of silent, peaceful protestors.

UC Davis students are planning a protest rally on campus today at noon.

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

You can add shoe designer to Perez Hilton‘s resume.

The celebrity blogger has designed two shoes for ShoeDazzle and their “Celebrity Shoe Design Program for Charity.”

According to the release, “Sparkle” is “a black faux suede pump with silver stud detailing on the heel, platform and dual ankle straps,” and “Shine” is “a casual unisex silver metallic sneaker with stud embellishments and zipper detailing.” Both shoes are available starting on Nov. 11 on ShoeDazzle.com

100 percent of the profits from the sale of his shoes will go to the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which addresses LGBT issues in K-12 schools.

Read more

Netflix saw shares drop 14.5 percent today, after the company announced it was lowering estimated third quarter subscriber numbers by a million.

The news comes just two weeks after the rental giant effectively doubled subscription prices. That price hike occurred the same day cable network Starz announced that they would stop providing movie content to Netflix.

Consumers, it seems, don’t want to pay more for less.

Customer service seems to be taking a hit as well. As a Netflix subscriber, I was surprised that the company, which has never been shy about flooding inboxes, didn’t send me notice that they were raising service fees. If I didn’t read the news, the extra charges would have come as a complete shock.

Make that a million and one subscribers, Netflix.

Today’s guest on the mediabistro.com Morning Media Menu was Kari Byron, one of the co-hosts on the Discovery Channel show, Mythbusters.

Byron discussed her new show on The Science Channel, Head Rush, explaining how they would reach a generation of teenagers surrounded by distractions. She also talked about President Barack Obama‘s visit to the set and the possibility of more Mythbusters‘ books.

Press play to listen. The show was hosted by GalleyCat editor Jason Boog and TVNewser co-editor Alex Weprin. Music by Kevin MacLeod.

Click here to receive mediabistro.com’s Daily Newsfeed via email.

In its story on the suicide of fifth-grade Miramonte Elementary School teacher Rigoberto Ruelas, the LA Times responded to the accusations from teachers union President A.J. Duffy and Ruelas’ family, that the Times’ publishing of “value-added” teacher test scores contributed to Ruelas’ death.

The Times said it extends “our sympathy to his family, students, friends and colleagues,” Nancy Sullivan, Times vice-president of communications, said in a statement. The newspaper published the database, she said, “because it bears directly on the performance of public employees who provide an important service, and in the belief that parents and the public have a right to judge the data for themselves.”

Meanwhile, LA Weekly news editor Jill Stewart thinks that the “pipsqueak, anti-reform, craven, do-nothing, sad-sack” Duffy should resign over his handling of the suicide.

Previously on FBLA: LA Times Implicated in Teacher Suicide

A South Gate teacher at Miramonte Elementary School who had been missing for several days was found dead over the weekend after committing suicide. Friends and family say the recent teacher evaluation report published in the LA Times may have played a role.

“He kept saying that there’s stress at work,” Ruelas’ brother, Alejandro told KABC.

The Times’ “value-added” rating suggested Ruelas was slightly “less effective” than average as a teacher.

“UTLA is outraged at the Los Angeles Times,” United Teachers Los Angeles president A.J. Duffy said in a statement. “We predicted there would be problems.”

Wow, a little early to start politicizing the suicide of one of your own, no? The autopsy hasn’t even been concluded.

“We understand that the sheriff’s department is currently investigating Mr. Ruelas death. We extend our sympathy to his family,” a Times spokesperson told KABC in response to Duffy’s statement.

The controversy surrounding the LA Times’ decision to publish an online database of teachers’ effectiveness isn’t going away any time soon. Yesterday, hundreds of teachers from the LA Unified School District gathered outside the Times’ downtown headquarters in protest.

“I feel, in a way, betrayed,” Lee Bartoletti of Ivanhoe Elementary School in Silver Lake told a Times reporter. “The Times has reneged on its mission of telling the truth.”

The protest was organized by the union United Teachers Los Angeles, which has also called for a boycott of the paper. The UTLA website didn’t have much to say on the matter, posting only a sentence or two about the protest.

“Members give the L.A. Times a consistent grade: F.”

What kind of story starts with President Carter’s crippling hemorrhoids and ends with fat Americans unable to squat when they poop? An awesome story, that’s what kind.

Maybe it’s just because this Fishie is Jewish–our people seem to have an endless fascination with bowel movements–but Daniel Lametti’s recent story in Slate on the benefits of employing the Asian squat when pooping is the greatest and most practically informative thing we’ve read in months.

Take a gander:

People can control their defecation, to some extent, by contracting or releasing the anal sphincter. But that muscle can’t maintain continence on its own. The body also relies on a bend between the rectum–where feces builds up–and the anus–where feces comes out. When we’re standing up, the extent of this bend, called the anorectal angle, is about 90 degrees, which puts upward pressure on the rectum and keeps feces inside. In a squatting posture, the bend straightens out, like a kink ringed out of a garden hose, and defecation becomes easier.

Proponents of squatting argue that conventional toilets produce an anorectal angle that’s ill-suited for defecation. By squatting, they say, we can achieve “complete evacuation” of the colon, ridding our bowels of disease-causing toxins.

God bless the Internet. Don’t think a story like this would have ever made it to print.

H/T HuffPo

Yesterday, the Glendale city council announced their intention to back Walt Disney Company’s plan for a 338,000-square-foot expansion of its creative campus in the northwest portion of the city. The announcement was basically a formality, seeing as the city and state have already spent $44 million in freeway and road improvements in the area in anticipation of the project.

The campus is already home to K-ABC News.

More from the Glendale News Press:

The plans included drawings of a six-story office building walled largely in glass and neighbored by a carefully crafted landscaped area that included towering palm trees and a dense park-like area that would provide a shaded space for outdoor activities.

No city officials criticized the plan and all said they were impressed by the designs, which were prepared by renowned firms Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, Arup and SWA Group, firms responsible for designing major university buildings, hospitals and the Olympic Water Cube in Beijing….

In addition to the 1,200 new jobs for the creative campus, the Burbank-based media giant’s expansion would also generate about 200 construction jobs.

Can’t argue with new creative jobs. Can argue with Disney’s efforts to rewrite Glendale’s signage laws, presumably to stick giant billboards all over their new expansion.