Free Republic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2dfD0ryMco

The Advocate newspaper in Baton Rouge Louisiana today published a front page story about Louisiana’s new law regarding teaching of evolution that contains a completely false statement in the lead. The paper reported an unnamed official stated that “Louisiana is the only state in the nation that has enacted a law that could change the way evolution is taught in public schools.” Louisiana recently enacted the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA) which protects teachers that encourage critical thinking and objective discussion about evolution and other scientific topics.

When a science director loses her job, it seems lots of people have an opinion about it. But after all, it's one woman and one job. "It's because this is really about what kind of education Texas students get in their public schools," Kathy Miller of the Texas Freedom Network said. Evolution supporters like Miller are thinking about the bigger picture in regards to what happened to Comer. The Texas Education Agency told Comer she had failed to remain neutral in the evolution versus creationism debate. "It's kind of like asking the science director to be neutral on whether the...

Just thought I'd post a thread where the various fireworks laws, regulations, etc. could be posted. National Council on Fireworks Safety Nice links to each State's fireworks laws. Here's their Safety Video Fireworks Classifications Various histories of fireworks....Fireworks.comWikipedia Fireworks entryPyrouniverse.com (lol) History of Fireworks

Someone once said school board politics can be the roughest politics of all. That wise person probably served on a board and faced voter hostility over proposed budgets and, on more than one occasion, the wrath of parents upset over a school policy affecting their children. All this for an office that comes with no pay and many hours of homework on educational issues and state regulations. And, oh, yes, school board meetings can get testy, even hostile, when there is a controversial issue. It all goes with the territory -- unless you are a member of the Guilderland School...

Hurtling through space 31 years after its launch, the Voyager 2 spacecraft has sent back the most detailed view yet of the shock wave that marks the thinning of the solar wind, the charged particles streaming from the sun. Researchers say the crossing confirms that the heliosphere—the region swept out by the solar wind—is actually lopsided, perhaps due to a tilted magnetic field in local interstellar space. The shock wave, or heliospheric termination shock, occurs when the supersonic wind thins to the point that it can no longer rebuff the denser haze of charged particles flowing through interstellar space. Instead,...

Iran's First Lady - Confirmed Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 11:49:20 am PDT "It’s confirmed. That really is Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s wife in that photograph I posted yesterday. Here are some more pictures of the First Bag Lady..."

Here is a great Independence Day Quiz. Click here.Be sure to think about your answers but most of all enjoy.

Forty-two-year-old Janelle Batkins of Harrison Township pleaded Thursday to two counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct in Macomb County Circuit Court. A no contest plea is not an admission of guilt, but is treated as such for sentencing.

GUILDERLAND -- Hundreds of people packed a Guilderland school board meeting Tuesday evening to protest the controversial reassignment of two popular teachers. Dozens of current and former students of Matt Nelligan and Anne Marie McManus spoke against the move even though board members walked out and refused to hear the messages of support in a public forum. There were howls from the crowd and calls to vote board members out of office after President Richard Weisz referred to the involuntary transfer of the teachers to Farnsworth Middle School as a personnel matter that could not be discussed. Nelligan and McManus,...

"No beauty products, No sissy male models, No wimpy articles - Just pure raw masculine information and ideas for real men"

Learn something new every day entry: this image and accompanying article (click the source link above) told me about Nea Kameni, which is in the Santorini lagoon and which had volcanic activity in 1950. I never knew the name of the island and that it was recently active until yesterday. Click for full-size. Here's a view taken from Santorini. And this image is just to put everything into proper perspective.

CCTV:New York,June 10/08:A school prank gone wrong on Long Island is caught on tape. Police said a group of students, dismissed early from Uniondale High School during the June 10th heat wave vandalized a 7-11 store. They're seen grabbing items off shelves and throwing items on the floor. According to police, they also stole candy and beverages from the store. Three teenagers are charged with riot and petty larceny.

If you saw it from a distance, it would look like a small alligator, but if you look closer you would find a fin in the back. In terms of construction, it had already undergone most of the changes from fish towards land animal, but in terms of lifestyle you are still looking at an animal that is habitually aquatic.” said Per Ahlberg, a professor of evolutionary biology at Uppsala University in Sweden.

Officials of a north suburban park district say strong racial language in the musical "Ragtime" prompted their decision Wednesday to cancel the show two weeks before it was set to open. Those involved in the production -- set for Wilmette's Gillson Park -- say the decision means the loss of more than a month of hard work by a cast of nearly 40, and a misunderstanding of the show's message and realistic look at race relations in the past century. Wilmette Park District Executive Director Tom Grisamore said he made the decision to pull "Ragtime" 12 days after learning the...

A pair of former Ware Shoals High School students have filed lawsuits against Ware Shoals School District 51 and its board of trustees in relation to the district’s employment of ex-cheerleading coach and guidance clerk Jill Moore. The lawsuits were filed on behalf of the two WSHS graduates -- one a former cheerleader, the other a former Hornets’ football player -- by Charleston attorney Lionel Lofton. “This is a civil lawsuit being brought by two former Ware Shoals High School students,” Lofton said Wednesday. Each lawsuit levies four causes of action against the district and its board, including gross negligence,...

Conservatives!

The Columbia University professor who gained widespread attention last fall after a noose was found hanging on her office door was fired on Monday after months of wrangling over charges that she plagiarized the work of two former students and a former colleague. Madonna G. Constantine, a professor of psychology and education with a focus on racial issues at Columbia’s Teachers College, was sanctioned in February, after an 18-month investigation into the plagiarism charge, but allowed to stay in her job and to appeal the ruling that she had violated the university’s academic standards. But over the last five months,...

This video is about a true story that happened in the late 60's. My wife and I were visiting a small town called Chepachet R.I on Tanyard Lane, (the old 1910, black & white photo of this video). The song of the video played in Bluegrass Stile, “Precious Memories” sung with mixed artist unknown. The video also has been redone for better visual.

I can't post any of the pictures that I want to, but they're remarkable. 13 June 2008: Strong Activity at the Fissure in Valle del Bove Here's another site from Volcano Discovery on the May 2008 eruptions that's similar. From: Etna eruption May 2008 Here's a couple of context images. The first shows where the Valle del Bove is. The second is from space, and the Valle del Bove is the broad dark-brown area to the right (east) of the summit craters.

JWT survey shows positive side of younger workers By Jeanie Casison While older employees often call out their 21- to 29-year-old Millennial colleagues for not showing respect, lacking a strong work ethic and being impatient on the job, new research by New York-based ad agency JWT reveal that these negative perceptions may be off the mark. According to the U.S. study, "Millennials at Work: Myths vs. Reality," the younger generation is more serious than people think. When asked about the statement "I think a formal appearance at the workplace is important for career success," 67 percent of Millennial respondents agreed...

Children learn many useful things from television shows and cartoon characters. They learn letters and numbers from the characters on Sesame Street; Dora the Explorer helps them hone their reasoning and problem-solving skills. Now, a cartoon character is telling them when they should die. He’s a dog in a lab coat named “Professor Schpinkee.” He is a creation of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Planet Slayer website. Kids who visit the website are invited to pay a “game” called “Professor Schpinkee’s Greenhouse Calculator.” But instead of learning letters or numbers—or even how to take a bite out of crime—they learn “how...

Leduc said they advised her that Victoria's educational assistant (EA) had visited a psychic, who said a youngster whose name started with "V" was being sexually abused by a man between 23 and 26 years old. Leduc was also handed a list of recent behaviours exhibited by her daughter.

This animation is to reveal how demoralizing it must be to wildlife in hunting season’s first day.

Full-size (for full effect). Basaseachi is a 312 meter waterfall.

A missing 14-year-old student and his female teacher both have been found safe — he in a Hamburg mall, she found sleeping in her car in Springville.

Star Prairie, WI - Chako isn't the kind of dog that's likely to find a home through the local animal shelter. An aging Siberian husky, incontinent and partially paralyzed, he needs round-the-clock care that his owner, widowed, and with arthritis herself, can no longer manage. But Chako has a home, along with dozens of other aged or maimed or once-abandoned animals, on a 40-acre spread along the Apple River in western Wisconsin. Chako lives at the Home for Life Sanctuary near Star Prairie, the final residence for an eclectic menagerie of dogs, cats, bunnies, birds - even an African desert...

Hey "School-Bus" Nagin, Has anyone told you the water is coming! No, it's not a hurricane. It's weird, all that flood water from your neighbors to the north just happens to run south, right down the middle of your city! You're been warned! ...for what good that will do.

The show is on now if anyone is interested.

London, England (AHN) -- Princess Eugenie, the daughter of the Duke and Duchess of York was caught running around naked with friends on the campus of her college late Friday night. According to reports, a school staff member was woken by "playful shrieks," and saw a group of girls romping around in a courtyard area. There were no boys, and school officials say there didn't seem to be any intoxicants involved, but a report in The Sun claimed that one student said the girls had been drinking at a pub that night. Upon being caught, the dozen or so girls...

Bikinis and other sexy stimuli can make men more prone to seek immediate gratification — leading to blown diets, budgets and bank accounts, new research suggests.In the study, detailed in the Journal of Consumer Research, men alternately fondled t-shirts and bras (which were not being worn during the test).After touching the bras, men valued the future less and the present more, said lead researcher Bram Van Den Bergh of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. Viewing ads with women in bikinis had the same effect.

PALMDALE - A stubby, star-spangled spacecraft made history in June 2004 in the skies over Mojave as the first privately funded manned space program. The story of SpaceShipOne and the people behind its success - notables such as aerospace designer Burt Rutan and mogul Sir Richard Branson - has been told in a variety of forums, but a new book brings it all together and offers a look at the more technical aspects of the program. "SpaceShipOne: An Illustrated History" chronicles the development and successful spaceflights of the Mojave-based project which ushered in the possibility of space travel for the...

Another in an occasional series of great state parks. Ricketts Glen is a fairly large state park west of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre; apparently chock-full of waterfalls (24 named on the Falls Trail). Here's a couple: This one's called Ganoga Falls; nice change-of-pace with black-and-white. At 94 feet, it's the tallest in the park. Nice small picture, no name given. Could be the same fall as the one below it (Murray Reynolds Falls). Murray Reynolds Falls: This last one was also taken at Ricketts Glen, not a waterfall, and it's 1/4 size (click for full-size). Nice desktop candidate.

Click link to see video.

Students Accused Of Distributing Racy Photos Of Middle School Girls Using Camera Phones And Computers HILLSDALE, N.J. (CBS) ― A sex scandal is rocking a New Jersey school. Several students at Pascack Valley High School have been suspended and could be facing charges after allegedly distributing racy photos of middle school girls on cell phones and school-issued computers. Students at the high school told CBS 2 HD they are disgusted by the nude photos of more than a dozen girls – then in middle school – discovered by a school-issued laptop. "I think it's sad," senior Alysa Marchiano said....

Bo (woof) In Commentary: Some think this dog is amazing. Me, I’m not surprised. (In case you missed this one, a Mission Viejo woman’s dog — a 9-year-old cockapoo known as Cookie Einstein — has become a celebrity of sorts for her apparent mathematical abilities, the O.C. Register’s Niyaz Pirani reported over the weekend. She [Cookie] adds, subtracts, multiplies, divides and calculates square roots and simple algebra through barking. And Cookie can answer if the question’s asked in either English or Spanish.) Bi-lingual and good in math…she must have scored well on her SATs. Cookie won’t respond to anybody but...

A team of physicists has claimed that our view of the early Universe may contain the signature of a time before the Big Bang. The discovery comes from studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB), light emitted when the Universe was just 400,000 years old. Their model may help explain why we experience time moving in a straight line from yesterday into tomorrow.

Congratulations. You've graduated from high school. We knew you would. No, really. Now that you have the diploma, we can admit it. We knew it would happen all along. We don't have statistics for this graduating class yet. But during the 2006-'07 school year, exactly one student dropped out of either middle school or high school in Mequon or Thiensville, according to the Department of Public Instruction. That's one out of more than 2,200. There was slightly more anarchy in places like Cedarburg and Slinger and Port Washington, where dropouts numbered four or five per district. West Bend, which has...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEJfS1v-fU0

I am sorry to have offended Professor Heller with  what I took to be a lighthearted gibe at Judith Butler.  Although my assessment of her stuff is basically the same as Martha Nussbaum's, I am happy to attribute my mystification at her language to my own intellectual limits -- especially if this admission will excuse me from re-reading the baroque prose of Bodies That Matter (1993).   Life is too short to struggle with an author when the payoff in understanding (for instance) "performativity" seems to be no more than the banal idea that people do stuff to exhibit their...

My 2008 election parody with my comedy acting students -

A Los Fresnos family is asking a state district court to stop a Cameron County justice of the peace from ordering spankings in his courtroom and to remove the judge from office. Mary Vasquez and her husband Daniel Zurita filed a lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of their minor daughter against Cameron County Pct. 6 Justice of the Peace Gustavo "Gus" Garza. Brownsville lawyer Mark Sossi represents the family. The petition alleges that on April 9, Garza told the then-14-year-old girl and her stepfather that the teen would be found guilty of a criminal offense and fined $500 for not attending...

Features - June 2, 2008 Digital Forensics: 5 Ways to Spot a Fake Photo By Hany Farid This story is a supplement to the feature "Digital Forensics: How Experts Uncover Doctored Images" which was printed in the June 2008 issue of Scientific American. Lighting Composite images made of pieces from different photographs can display subtle differences in the lighting conditions under which each person or object was originally photographed. Such discrepancies will often go unnoticed by the naked eye. For an image such as the one at the right, my group can estimate the direction of the light source for...

Should parents need teaching credentials to home-school their kids?

Sorry I missed last week. So here's two, one from space, one from the ground, of Ireland's Burren. Source article for the first image: Burren Plateau, County Clare, Ireland Click for full-size (this is half-size): Clints and grikes OK, well, three then:

My niece has been assigned a list of books for her summer reading. If you are wondering, she attends a private school. Because I haven't read any of the books on the list I need the help and insight from freepers. The list is below and I'd greatly appreciate any and all commentary. Thanks again. A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly And Then There Were Non by Agatha Christie Bread and Roses Too by Katherine Paterson Leonardo's Shadow by Christopher Grey      

According to many of our elected federal leaders, in the year 2014 the United States will witness a miracle. At that time, 6 years from now, all children in this country enrolled in grades K through 12 will be absolutely “proficient” at reading. How can this be? Because, our federal education legislation has dictated it. Under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) federal education policy, all public schools are required to ensure that all children enrolled in their schools meet this standard (without much thought to the required resources, of course). Wiping out social, economic and political realities in one...

I've been doing some genealogical research and have traced a couple branches of my family through the Civil War, the Texas War of Independence, and the Revolutionary War. I've also been given the opportunity via some co-workers to join the Sons of the Republic of Texas. I've checked into it, but have also found other historical societies such as the Sons of the Confederacy, and the Sons of the American Revolution. Does anyone out there have any info on these groups as to what it's like to be involved in these groups, and which ones are worth joining?

BLACK RIVER FALLS, WI — In the country of the white pines, by the waters of Lake Superior and the banks of the Wisconsin River, the voices are dying one by one. The first languages of Wisconsin, the vessels bearing ages of American Indian history, song, medicine and prayers, could be as little as a generation away from an all-abiding silence. Languages that are grafted to the land and that together once counted tens of thousands of native speakers in the state, now have only an aging few here. Without unprecedented action, the state's tribes will test the Ho-Chunk belief...