Free Republic

Dartmouth College is teaching its student body a terrible lesson: physical threats against the rich pay off big-time. Alec Torres writes in National Review Online: Having been threatened with “physical action� by an unknown number of anonymous students if it did not respond to a list of more than 120 demands, the Dartmouth administration promptly surrendered last week and is planning on spending at least $31 million to satisfy the students’ will. College President Phil Hanlon and Provost Martin Wybourne made a statement last Thursday in response to the so-called “Freedom Budget� — the eight-page letter and list of demands...

Newly-elected New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced last week that space-sharing agreements for three New York City charter schools have been rescinded. This decision marks an abrupt change from de Blasio’s charter-friendly predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, who helped create a supportive environment for publicly funded charter schools and was a proponent of space-sharing agreements between charter schools and traditional public schools. The three charter schools affected by de Blasio’s announcement are operated by the Success Academy network. Two of the charter schools have yet to open, and will likely not open because of de Blasio’s decision, while the third...

Chuck Norris' personal code of ethics / principles for life I will develop myself to the maximum of my potential in all ways. I will forget the mistakes of the past and press on to greater achievements. I will always be in a positive frame of mind and convey this feeling to every person that I meet. I will continually work at developing love, happiness and loyalty in my family and acknowledge that no other success can compensate for failure in the home. I will look for the good in all people and make them feel worthwhile. If I have...

Aerospace engineering is a challenging major under the best of circumstances. Over 100 people were in my freshman class, but only 15 graduated. The crux of that climb at my alma mater was the so-called “slaughterhouse” semester: the fall of senior year, wherein one had to take 5 technically challenging and labor intensive classes in order to graduate that spring: Aerodynamics Lab, Vibrations, Space Vehicle Dynamics, Propulsion, and Rocket Propulsion. To apply for grad school you had to write your essays, pay the application fees, apply for fellowships, collect letters of recommendation, etc. And self-supporting students like me also had...

A SUNY Brockport student from West Seneca and a Genesee County man have been arrested for allegedly forcing a dog to be held upside down and drink beer. Brockport Police report that Robert Yates, 20, took a photo of the dog being held over the beer keg and posted it to Twitter at a Saturday night house party. Officers also arrested Shane Oliver, 20, of Bergen. Both are facing charges of torturing/injuring animals. The dog’s owner was apparently not involved. The college issued a statement saying, “We were alarmed to learn of this disturbing photo. The College is investigating this...

I’m a Southern boy (that’s Southern, with a capital ‘S’). My parents are Southern by birth. So were my grandparents. I was born in the South, I live in the South. My blood probably resembles gravy more than it does blood and I’m quite sure my breath smells like fried chicken. I’ll be the first to admit the ‘South’ is different. We’re not the Mid-West, Eastern Seaboard or the West Coast. We’re another country. For that matter, we’re another world. The best example I can think of to demonstrate this fact is the horoscope. Every newspaper in the country publishes...

OILDALE, Calif. — The tanker trains loaded with crude oil still rattle down the tracks at the end of the alleyway where Merle Haggard, a living legend of country music, grew up in a boxcar that his father transformed into the family home. “The walls were thick: cool in the summer and warm in winter,” Lillian Haggard Rea, the musician’s 93-year-old sister, recalled of the boxcar that their father, James Haggard, a carpenter with the Santa Fe railroad, converted by hand during the Depression. It was, she said, “just a wonderful home to live in.” Like much of the music...

Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson: Same Old Product, Bright New Packaging If there was any doubt that the rebooted Cosmos series, which premiered last night, would be politically charged and have a materialistic ideological message, consider what viewers saw in its first sixty seconds. The opening featured President Obama giving a statement endorsing the series. That's not necessarily bad, except for what happened next. Immediately following President Obama's endorsement, the show replayed Carl Sagan's famous materialistic credo from the original Cosmos series that "The cosmos is all there is, or ever was, or ever will be." Does it violate the...

When Porter the dog tries to figure out why his owner has placed a toy bone under a bucket, his response might provide some insight about human development, autism and other learning disabilities. That's the hope of Laurie Santos, who runs the Canine Cognition Center at Yale, which opened in December. She pointed to the 4-year-old chocolate lab mix, brought in by psychology grad student Kristi Leimgruber. Porter is growing up in the same kind of environment as human children, Santos said, so comparing how he learns with the way people learn can tell us a lot about human development.

The nine main problems and a relevant link for each: 1) Bad Reading Methods. Whole word (also known as sight-words, Dolch words, and many other aliases) is an 85-year flop that never worked. Children are told to memorize words as graphic designs. For most children, that’s effectively the end of literacy. (Learn about phonics.) 2) Inane Math Instruction. New Math and Reform Math mix advanced concepts with elementary arithmetic, guaranteeing that children are confused and make little progress. Inefficient methods are taught. The rhetoric is that children are learning the meaning behind the numbers. For young children, this is an...

What a wonderful world it would be if, for example, the people in charge of our public schools really believed in knowledge. If, for example, the National Council of Teachers of English, really loved English. If the National Council of Teachers of Math, really loved math. Alas, that does not seem to be the case. A lot of boring things are being taught in boring, incoherent ways, with the result that children learn almost nothing. Then the Education Establishment comes up with so-called “authentic assessments” to prove that the children learned a little something. There’s an easy way to tell...

A painter friend of mine is putting on a web convention of famous contemporary artists. It includes interviews with Marvin Mattelson, Albert Handell, Fernando Freitas, and many other Masters in the art world. I apologize for not posting this sooner, as it's been going on for a week now and is only available until March 26, 2014. There have been six interviews released with a new one every day. If you are an artist or art-lover, this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to gain information and inspiration to help transform your own art or hear from the masters. This is really...

The U.S. unemployment rate edged up to 6.7 percent in February as men struggled to find work, according to the Labor Department report issued Friday. More than 160,000 men joined the ranks of the unemployed. That increase raised their unemployment rate to 6.4 percent from 6.2 percent. Particularly hard hit were African-American men. Their rate climbed to 12.9 percent last month from 12 percent in January. It did so because more African-American men began searching unsuccessfully for work last month. …

Sarah with Greta On the Record. Very interesting. She gearing up for her speech tomorrow. Video here.

A student group at LeMoyne College, a Jesuit institution in upstate New York, will be hosting its second annual drag show on Monday March 10, according to CampusGroups.com. The group Creating Awareness and Reaching Equality (C.A.R.E.) writes about the event on its Facebook page, calling it “a fun event for everyone” where students can “learn about drag culture ettiquet (sp), enter prize raffles, and dance!” The poster for the event shows a man with half his face made up as a woman and says “Mondays are Such a Drag.”

Parents have condemned a school's decision to ban all pork products from the menu and replace other meats with halal versions. Pupils aged between three and 11 at Brinsworth Manor Infant and Junior Schools in Rotherham - which Ofsted identifies as having only a small number of pupils from minority ethnic groups - will no longer be able to enjoy sausages, bacon or ham. Parents at both schools, which share a site, were told of the decision in a letter from Rotherham Council’s principal catering officer Ron Parry, who wrote that there had been ‘minor adjustments’ to the lunch menu....

**SNIP** Late last week, it came to light a class of seventh-grade female students at Stephen Decatur Middle School had been required to make clay models of male genitalia as part of the Family Life and Human Development program taught in county schools to students in grades 5-11. While most agree the course, which teaches students about their changing bodies and making good decisions, is an important one for the students, few agreed making clay models of the male reproductive organs was an appropriate component of the program. **SNIP** Luzier said the girls in the class made life-size male genitalia...

The original Dodge Viper revealed in 1992 was a beast of a machine — an attempt by then-Chrysler exec Bob Lutz to revive the spirit of the Shelby Cobra and give Chrysler a world-class sports car. Powered by a massive V-10 with 400 hp, the early Viper's brute force overwhelmed many drivers. Today, the power that made the Viper a legend appears to be at the heart of an order from Chrysler to dozens of trade schools, demanding the immediate destruction of some 93 early Vipers, including a preproduction model that could likely fetch a couple hundred thousand dollars at...

New Jersey teenager Rachel Canning, 18, lost a lawsuit asking her parents to pay her child support. Canning, however, is still hoping that the judge will order them to pay for her college education. We think black parents would have handled the situation a little differently. We took a survey of The Root staff to find out how our parents would have reacted, and this is what we found:

Calgary residents are throwing their support behind a local school bus driver who was fired for picking up a group of students in her own SUV. Kendra Lindon was fired by First Student Canada after she picked up six junior high students in her own vehicle last month, after discovering that her bus wouldn’t start. There weren't enough seat belts for two of her passengers, but Lindon said, at the time, she was more concerned about the students waiting in the extreme cold. The temperature that morning was in the minus 20s. She also said she wasn't sure a replacement...

An East Bay teacher is asking actor and comedian Will Ferrell to be his "date" at his school's upcoming prom. Chad Cochran, who teaches at San Ramon Valley High School in Danville, posted a YouTube video pleading to Ferrell to join him at the campus' senior ball. "I am asking you, Will Ferrell, will you please chaperone the senior ball with me?" Cochran asks in the video. The teacher follows up by saying he is happily married with two children and two dogs. His wife, however, won't be able to attend prom. Why should Ferrell accept the educator's offer? Cochran...

Real WW2 combat footage - Kamikaze Attack, USS Laffey (DD-724)

The College Board announced Wednesday that it is overhauling the SAT, dropping the timed essay and focusing less on fancy vocabulary in order to level the playing field a bit for high school students from a wider range of families. The organization's own data show that wealthier Americans, from more educated families, tend to do far better on the best. As do white and Asian Americans, and those students who had the opportunity to take the PSAT in high school before taking the SAT. Almost certainly, these four findings have common origins in that the SAT benefits families who can...

LANDIS — A Rowan County school bus driver remains in jail today after Landis Police say he allowed students to smoke marijuana on the bus. Police say it wasn’t the first time he allowed students to smoke on the bus. Brian Davis Overcash, 30, was charged with four counts of misdemeanor contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The incident occurred Feb. 20 after Corriher-Lipe Middle School assistant Principal Matt Krome contacted authorities. Krome told officers with the Landis Police Department that Overcash, who drove bus No. 162, told the assistant principal that several students were on the bus smoking...

SONORA (CBS SF) — Three third-grade students at a Sonora elementary school were busted for smoking pot in the school’s bathroom last week. Two 8-year-olds and a 9-year-old were caught by another student, who immediately informed school administrators. Those officials then alerted local police. The students were questioned by officers, and later released to their parents on February 27th. Sonora Elementary School Principal Chris Boyles would not speak with CBS SF regarding the case, but Superintendent Leigh Shampain confirmed that the students were caught smoking marijuana in the school’s bathroom. He would not discuss how the students might be disciplined.

"When walking in open space, collision avoidance with other pedestrians is a process that successfully takes place many times."

Full Title - "Lawyer on Chris Christie’s SCHOOL FUNDING task force is bankrolling teen suing parents for college cash" The prominent New Jersey attorney who is funding the legal costs of 18-year-old Morris Catholic High School senior Rachel Canning in her lawsuit against her own parents serves on Gov. Chris Christie’s School Funding Task Force. The attorney is John P. Inglesino, the managing partner at Inglesino, Wyciskala & Taylor, LLC, a 10-attorney firm in Parsippany, N.J. Gov. Christie’s School Funding Task Force exists to eradicate abuse and fraud from New Jersey’s education system, explains the Common Sense Institute of New...

EVIDENCE has emerged that the views of the Paedophile Information Exchange influenced policy-making at the National Council for Civil Liberties when it was run by former Labour Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt. PIE members were lobbying NCCL officials for the age of consent to be reduced and campaigning for “paedophile love”. Their view that children were not harmed by having sex with adults appears to have been adopted by those at the top of the civil liberties group. Today we publish extracts from an NCCL report written for the Criminal Law Revision Committee in 1976 when Mrs Hewitt was general secretary....

Despite an increase in the number of students who receive free meals as a part of Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign, 1.6 million students have dropped out of the school lunch program, according to a Government Accountability Office Report (GAO), which noted that part of the decline was due to the palatability of the lunch offerings, and “plate waste”—students throwing away some of the food. […] “Further, some SFAs we visited noted that negative student reactions to lunches that complied with the new meat and grain portion size limits directly affected program participation in their districts,” said the GAO. The...

<p>A Minnesota public high school was so committed to obeying its fire drill policy to the exact letter of the law that it forced a female student–dressed only in a swimsuit, and sopping wet–to stand outside in the freezing cold for ten minutes. As a result, she suffered frostbite.</p>

Students at a central Florida high school are devoting their prom money to helping a popular math teacher who is very ill in his third round with cancer, WESH reported. The prom team at Pine Ridge High School in Deltona has taken on the moniker Team Charlie in honor of Charlie Lundell, who has been at the school since it opened 20 years ago, according to WESH. "He really cares about helping people learn and really wants us to be our full potential," junior class President Katie Buday said of Lundell, and students want to help him out. Now the...

Right wing think tanks have taken a principled stand against the CCSSI on the grounds that it violates the constitution and laws of the United States[6]. Folks at Schoolsmatter and Susan Ohanian are almost lone wolfs on the left in vigorously targeting the CCSSI as “authoritarian”, and exposing the role venture philanthropy (especially Bill Gates) plays in imposing the CCSSI.

Community Connect is working with Planned Parenthood's National Office on a new Affordable Care Act (ACA) Outreach Campaign. Community Connect in support of this work is launching a dynamic operation to reach, engage, and educate women and help them begin the process of obtaining health coverage. Community Connect is looking to hire Canvassers for the campaign that will be responsible for executing the robust door to door canvass program to educate the local community about the ACA, assist them through the initial steps of the enrollment process and register residents to vote.

A Florida teenager's Facebook post has cost her father an $80,000 legal settlementA Florida teenager's Facebook post has cost her father an $80,000 legal settlement. The Palm Beach Post reported Sunday the father had sued a Miami-area preparatory school for age discrimination after he lost his job as headmaster. Dana Snay's father, Patrick Snay, had settled an age discrimination case with his former employer, Gulliver Preparatory School. Elderly Man Wakes Up in Body Bag at Funeral Home The school agreed to settle the case for $80,000 and the settlement agreement included a stipulation that the man and his wife not...

Caphaw Trojan Found in Youtube Ads In Malware, Malware Alerts by steven on February 25, 2014 | Deutsch, English, Français, Italiano, Ру��кий 99 EmailShare youtube-logoLast Friday – under the shadow of two critical zero day exploits on Internet Explorer and Adobe Flash – researchers at Bromium Labs discovered malware in an advertising network connected to Youtube. Specific details are yet unknown and the threat has yet to be completely mitigated. As of Friday, Google Security was made aware of the issue and is currently investigating the matter with Bromium. What is Known The malware being served is a Caphaw banking...

A California couple that discovered $10 million worth of gold coins last year will have to pay nearly half that amount in federal and state income tax, regardless of whether they sell the coins.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman will retire from Princeton University in June 2015 and move to New York, he announced on Friday. […] Krugman credited the move to location and to his increased focus on public policy, specifically income equality …

As you read the following, keep in mind that this happened three weeks ago. The only reason I know about it is because Glenn Reynolds linked to it this morning.WXIA in Atlanta, Feb. 5: The FBI says a Georgia Tech graduate student was burned by a Molotov cocktail at his apartment in the 200 block of 10th Street, not far from Piedmont Park. Atlanta police spokeswoman Kim Jones said Saamer Akhshabi suffered third-degree burns over 90 percent of his body. Lighter fluid and a charred pillow and mattress were found inside the apartment, along with the Molotov cocktail and several...

Long before he arrived at the White House, Barack Obama was the son of a single mother, challenged and tempted by the same societal ills that disproportionately keep African-Americans impoverished and behind bars. Now the nation’s first black president is unveiling a new initiative aimed at breaking down those obstacles, and pledging to continue the fight long after his presidency ends. Joined at the White House by young men of color, Obama on Thursday was calling on America’s businesses, philanthropists and government leaders to join forces to put more boys on a path toward successful lives. Foundations were to announce...

"Google has spent years analyzing who succeeds at the company, which has moved away from a focus on GPAs, brand name schools, and interview brain teasers...Google looks for the ability to step back and embrace other people’s ideas when they’re better. “It’s ‘intellectual humility.’ Without humility, you are unable to learn,” Bock says. “Successful bright people rarely experience failure, and so they don’t learn how to learn from that failure....Those people have an unfortunate reaction, Bock says: “They, instead, commit the fundamental attribution error, which is if something good happens, it’s because I’m a genius. If something bad happens, it’s...

In case you haven’t heard, an Alaskan Malamute killed a 6 day old baby in Wales this week. The dad had brought the dog home from the pub several months earlier because someone said they were going to get rid of it. This news makes me incredibly sad. It also makes me painfully aware that the breed may soon be as demonized as the Pit Bull. But humans also carry some responsibility for this tragedy. What with your fanciful ideas about dogs and such. So at the risk of upsetting some of my readers, let me state what should be...

It’s not just about what America’s kids are getting in the lunch line. The Obama administration is moving to phase out junk food advertising on football scoreboards and elsewhere on school grounds—part of a broad effort to combat child obesity and create what Michelle Obama calls “a new norm” for today’s schoolchildren and future generations. “This new approach to eating and activity is not just a fad,” Mrs. Obama said Tuesday as she described the proposed rules at the White House. Promotion of sugary drinks and junk foods around campuses during the school day would be phased out under the...

Conservative student group Turning Point USA caused a stir last week by posting pages online from a textbook used at the University of South Carolina. The book calls Ronald Reagan “sexist” and says conservatives “take a basically pessimistic view of human nature” — one in which “people are conceived of as being corrupt.” Several avowed conservatives balked not just at the negative portrayal of Reagan but also at the idea that the conservative persuasion contains a measure of pessimism. On this point, the textbook is right and they are wrong. Russell Kirk was the man credited by William F. Buckley...

Penn State's Thon ended Sunday afternoon with a record-breaking finish. Last year's $12.37 million was surpassed with this year's $13,343,517.33. The total was revealed Sunday at the 2014 Thon at the Bryce Jordan Center. This is the 42nd year for the student fundraiser. Thon is a 46 hour no-sitting, no-sleeping dance marathon. Since 1977, Thon has raised more than $101 million benefiting the Four Diamonds Fund at Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital.

Education departments in a number of regions in Saudi Arabia have banned female employees and visitors who do not wear a face veil from entering girls’ schools, the Saudi Gazette reported on Monday. The report cited a pamphlet sent by education departments to school principals, in which male and female school guards are instructed to abide by Islamic rules, regulations and directives and moral principles. …

Even if you are not shopping for a Glock 42, this is still an excellent comparison of many single stack pistols on the market. There are almost an overwhelming number of options for a .380 or 9mm concealed carry weapon. Hopefully this video helped you glean some information.

For the fourth straight year, Washington, D.C. is the most literate city in the United States, according to a recent study on literacy. The study, by Central Connecticut State University (CCSU), examined how well Americans used their literacy skills in the nation’s largest cities. Rounding out the top five were Seattle, Minneapolis, Atlanta and Pittsburgh. CCSU ranked the cities based on six categories: bookstores, residents’ educational attainment, newspaper circulation, use of online resources, the library system, and periodical publishing resources. The most literate cities were largely in the Northeast, and they generally had a well-educated and well-paid population.Click here to...

I've come to a time in my life when I should make some decisions about what happens when I'm gone ...

After a year of fundraising, months of planning, and 46 hours of dancing, this year’s IFC/Panhellenic Dance Marathon shattered last year’s final total and raise a whopping $13,343,517.33 For The Kids. With the flipping of those iconic white placards by the 2014 Executive Committee, another beautiful chapter was added to the story of THON — our story of THON. This is the tenth straight year THON raised more money than the previous year. Since 1977, when THON and the Four Diamonds Fund paired up for a common cause, more than $100 million has been raised, excluding this year’s efforts....

I recently graduated with a Business degree, accounting major. I initially wanted to pursue a CPA license, but it doesn't look practical at this point. How did you prepare to pass the EA exam? Gleim? Thanks.