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A fifth-grade teacher in Cambridge who is facing a charge of transportation of child pornography admitted to secretly videotaping children changing in and out of their clothes on more than one occasion, according to federal law enforcement officials. Josh A. Wairi, 27, of Somerville was charged today in federal court in Boston in a criminal complaint filed by a US postal inspector. In the affidavit, the inspector detailed a hunt for Wairi through cyberspace, kicked off by tips from America Online and Dropbox Inc. The search eventually led to Wairi’s Somerville apartment, where law enforcement officials executed a search warrant...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHuXTEYqcX0 http://www.savetaxesbymoving.com A calculator

Israeli archaeologists have unearthed a rare sarcophagus featuring a slender face and a scarab ring inscribed with the name of an Egyptian pharaoh, Israel's Antiquities Authority said Wednesday. The mystery man whose skeleton was found inside the sarcophagus was most likely a local Canaanite official in the service of ancient Egypt, Israeli archaeologists believe, shining a light on a period when pharaohs governed the region. "This is a really beautiful face, very serene," said Edwin van den Brink, an Egyptologist and archaeologist with Israel's government antiquities authority. "It's very appealing." Van den Brink said archaeologists dug at Tel Shadud, an...

Education Secretary Arne Duncan visited an elementary school in Columbus, N.M. last year where 75 percent of the students live in Mexico but are being educated in the United States because their mothers crossed the border to seek medical help, and their birth here makes them U.S. citizens. "So for decades, women in labor have been allowed to cross the border and go to the nearest hospital, which happens to be just 30 miles north of the U.S. border,” the documentary says. “Once they give birth there, the children become citizens.” Duncan also hailed the children’s parents for having “the...

It used to be that if you went to a college-level debate tournament, the students you’d see would be bookish future lawyers from elite universities, most of them white. In matching navy blazers, they’d recite academic arguments for and against various government policies. It was tame, predictable, and, frankly, boring. No more. These days, an increasingly diverse group of participants has transformed debate competitions, mounting challenges to traditional form and content by incorporating personal experience, performance, and radical politics. These “alternative-style” debaters have achieved success, too, taking top honors at national collegiate tournaments over the past few years.

Marty Resnick installed his sculpture on the grounds of Kingsborough Community College before moving in 1975 to live off the land in Southeast Ohio. The origins of the scrap metal artwork puzzled faculty members for decades.Friends of an enigmatic artist have solved a Manhattan Beach whodunit that has stumped locals for four decades. A rusting sculpture on the campus of Kingsborough Community College has puzzled faculty members who long ago had lost the identity of its creator — if they had it to begin with. “When they were doing the inventory they had no record of the sculpture,” Kingsborough Art...

GPS Digital Producer Jason Miks speaks with Amy Chua, a law professor at Yale, and her husband Jed Rubenfeld, also a professor at Yale, about their new book ‘The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America,’ and what it means to be a Tiger Mom. Watch Fareed’s interview with Chua and Rubenfeld this Sunday at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN.Your 2011 book, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, sparked an intense debate with its look at the differences between Chinese and Western parenting. What are the key...

Principal: L.I. High School Students Suspended Indefinitely For Displaying Confederate Flag SOUTH HUNTINGTON, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) – Two Long Island high school students have been suspended for allegedly bringing a Confederate flag to school. Brother Gary Cregan, principal of St. Anthony’s High School in South Huntington, said the two seniors walked in with a Confederate flag draped around their shoulders during an after-hours sporting event at the school. As CBS 2′s Kathryn Brown reported, there is outrage and disgust on Long Island.

Despite the controversy and complaints, Texas A&M is holding separate and special graduation ceremonies for LGBT students Wednesday evening. The "Lavender Graduation," as it's being called, will feature as its commencement speaker Phyllis Frye – the first transgender judge in the state and a Texas A&M alumna. Supporters haven't specifically stated the reason for the special ceremony, except that "new leadership" in the pro-LGBT resource center on campus [link caution] is making it possible this year – and that it is to "celebrate the accomplishments of graduating lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and ally [LGBTQQIAA] students." Regardless of the...

After listening to one of my favorite podcaster, Dan Carlin & his Hardcore History, about the beginning of World War I, I would love to find out more about this time in history. I know that Freepers are a well read bunch and I am asking for any recommendations you may care to make in a good book covering this time in history.

FULL TITLE: Teacher fired 'after she ordered six students to attack 7th grade boy who spoke back to her' in shocking videotaped beat-down A Florida teacher was fired from her job last week after she allegedly encouraged six students to attack a classmate that spoke back to her. Teacher Dru Dehart was fired on Thursday night from her position at Port St. Lucie's Northport K-8 school by the St. Lucie County school board, WPTV reports. Dehart was accused last year of encouraging a March 2013 incident caught on surveillance video that showed six students attacking classmate Radravious Williams, WPBF reported...

In its recent ruling that athletes at Northwestern University have the right to unionize, the National Labor Relations Board cited the case of senior quarterback Kain Colter, who naively thought that he could pursue a pre-med degree while also playing on the school’s football team. When he attempted to enroll in a required chemistry class during his sophomore year, “Colter testified that his coaches and advisors discouraged him from taking the class because it conflicted with morning football practices. Colter consequently had to take this class in the summer session, which caused him to fall behind his classmates who were...

Our brains start to slow down once we hit 24, researchers have discovered. They analysed thousands of played of the hugely popular Starcraft 2 computer game, and saw a universal slowdown far earlier than they expected. They claim that as soon as players hit the ripe old age of 25, they have already reached their peak in terms of cognitive motor performance.

A girl who was recently accepted at the University of South Carolina got a second shocking letter telling her that her she was instead rejected by the college. The letter to Caitlyn Metzker that arrived with official-looking USC letterhead and envelope, said, "Unfortunately, it is clear that your grades are not what they were when we accepted you." The story of the letter was spotlighted Friday by Carson Daly during “What’s Trending” on the Today show. The letter goes on, in very convincing, official-sounding language to tell Metzker that there is concern about her senior year performance. The letter concludes...

HARTFORD — The city celebrated the UConn men's and women's basketball teams' national championships Sunday with a victory parade through downtown, and it was one of the biggest parties Hartford has ever seen. An estimated 200,000 people lined the streets as blue and white confetti showered them while they cheered two teams and two trophies. After the parade, players, coaches and dignitaries addressed the crowd in a rally outside the Capitol.

The University of Kentucky has stopped a campus-wide survey asking students if they think homosexuality is a “sin,” apparently deciding that knowing this information is not worth the negative publicity it is receiving. The survey, originally reported on by Campus Reform, asked students if they agree or disagree with statements such as “Male homosexuality is a perversion” and “If it were possible, I would be straight.” It was not made clear in the survey who would be reading students’ responses or if the survey was confidential, sparking concern and confusion among some. …

A progressive talk show host this past week did a partial review of Karl Marx’s ten recommendations to establish communist society. He discussed the abolition of rights of inheritance, not completely dismissing it. He also discussed the progressive income tax which he endorsed; of course no self-respecting progressive would ever disagree with that. It is a cornerstone of progressivism. The analog would be that when you go to the grocer’s. The check out clerk would ask for your income statement before determining the charges. He did admit that Marx wanted to destroy all rights of property; mighty charitable of him....

A-Z Index of U.S. Government Departments and AgenciesHouse Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says Republican-led efforts to rein in government spending are pointless because there is nothing left to cut in the almost $4 trillion-a-year federal budget.“The cupboard is bare. There’s no more cuts to make. It’s really important that people understand that,” Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, said in an interview broadcast Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”September 22, 2013

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - John Urschel (Williamsville, N.Y.), the Penn State All-American guard who claimed the 2013 William V. Campbell Trophy from the National Football Foundation (NFF) as college football's premier scholar-athlete, has been named the recipient of the 84th James E. Sullivan Award, presented by the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) to America's top amateur athlete. Urschel was announced as the winner of the prestigious award Friday night during an awards ceremony at the AAU National Headquarters in Orlando, Fla. 
Urschel was selected from a pool of 19 semifinalists vying for the honor in 2014, and was joined by two...

This month, high school seniors across America are receiving college decision letters of acceptance and rejection. Many of these students, and their parents, will think that where they go to college will significantly affect their employment future. They think wrong. Today, whether you go to college retains some importance in your employment options. But where you go to college is of almost no importance. Whether your degree, for example, is from UCLA or from less prestigious Sonoma State matters far less than your academic performance and the skills you can show employers. Research on the impact of college selection has...

Enrollment at American colleges is sliding, but competition for spots at top universities is more cutthroat and anxiety-inducing than ever. In the just-completed admissions season, Stanford University accepted only 5 percent of applicants, a new low among the most prestigious schools, with the odds nearly as bad at its elite rivals. Deluged by more applications than ever, the most selective colleges are, inevitably, rejecting a vast majority, including legions of students they once would have accepted. Admissions directors at these institutions say that most of the students they turn down are such strong candidates that many are indistinguishable from those...

Schiller got into trouble after two of his students turned in science projects designed to shoot little projectiles, reports the Los Angeles Times. One of the projects used compressed air (but was not actually connected to any air). The other one was coil gun: a tube surrounded by a coil and powered by a standard AA battery. An unidentified school employee saw the air-pressure projectile device and got scared because, to her, it looked like a fearsome weapon. The amount of knowledge the employee has concerning science – if any – is unclear. As a result of the unnamed employee’s...

STORRS, Conn. (AP) - University of Connecticut officials have suspended a sorority as they investigate allegations that its members forced men to drink booze, eat dog treats, paint their bodies, wear women's underwear and take alcohol shots off each other's bodies.

"Mike Rowe’s new series Somebody’s Gotta Do It brings viewers face to face with men and women who march to the beat of a different drum. In each episode, Rowe visits unique individuals and joins them in their respective undertakings, paying tribute to innovators, do-gooders, entrepreneurs, collectors, fanatics – people who simply have to do it. This show is about passion, purpose, and occasionally, hobbies that get a little out of hand."

Do you have a sneaking suspicion that your current field resembles an endangered species? If so, you might not be alone in feeling like a dinosaur. According to Las Vegas-based career expert Denise Nicole Cook, people working in professions that are experiencing increased automation and technological change could find their jobs practically extinct in the not-too-distant future. "Pay attention to the industry you're in, because even if it's not currently automated, it may be automated in the future," says Cook, founder of The Honest Info career counseling firm. Sound like your career, or one you're planning to pursue? Keep reading...

CLAREMONT, N.H.,A 79-year-old substitute teacher chose to resign from teaching after a very unfriendly dispute with school administrators in Claremont, N.H. Carol Thebarge opted to give up her job after 35 year instead of “unfriending” her students on Facebook. "Do we have the right as teachers, when we respect our students and our students respect us, to have that relationship?" Thebarge told WMUR. "I feel like mine is very safe. I have never been inappropriate." School administrators at Stevens High School told Thebarge that her account was a potential safety concern, especially after another teacher was let go after being...

BOSTON (AP) — Brandeis (BRAN’-dys) University in Massachusetts has decided not to award an honorary degree to a woman who has made comments critical of Islam. The decision follows complaints from students, faculty members and others about honoring Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali (ah-YAHN’ HUR’-see AH’-ee). In a 2007 interview with Reason Magazine, Ali was quoted saying that “we are at war with Islam” and urged that Muslims be “defeated.”

Eight middle school students were hospitalized after they were caught drinking booze out of a water bottle and an AriZona ice tea bottle inside a classroom, a parent and the Department of Education said. The seventh-grade girls were passing around the alcohol-filled bottles inside at William A. Morris Intermediate School, 445 Castleton Ave., on Wednesday afternoon, the DOE said. The water bottle smelled of alcohol, but the DOE did not say what kind. "We're going to really discuss this," said Makishan Brown, of West Brighton, mother of one of the girls. "I have zero tolerance about this." Brown said the...

The ongoing trial involving journalist Mark Steyn – accused of defaming climate change theorist Michael Mann – reflects an increasingly dangerous tendency among our intellectual classes to embrace homogeneity of viewpoint. Steyn, whose column has appeared for years on these pages, may be alternatingly entertaining or over-the-top obnoxious, but the slander lawsuit against him marks a milestone in what has become a dangerously authoritarian worldview being adopted in academia, the media and large sections of the government bureaucracy.

Four of Connecticut's five starters scored in double figures as the Huskies women's basketball team matched the accomplishment of their male counterparts Tuesday night, defeating Notre Dame 79-58 to win a record ninth NCAA championship and becoming only the second team to complete a perfect 40-0 season.

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) -- Shabazz Napier walked slowly through the hallway of the stadium - the tears still drying, the twine from the cut-down net still hanging around his neck. "Bittersweet. Bittersweet. Bittersweet," he said, over and over again. Bitter because it's over. Sweet because UConn won it all after being left behind and told to go away.

The single most important aspect of education is reading.   If children are not reading, their entire education comes to a halt. That’s what has happened in millions of lives.  All the statistics for many decades reveal a curious surprise: our public schools don’t actually know how to teach reading or, more likely, they pretend not to know.  This is a bizarre scandal, especially given that children have been learning to read for thousands of years, and 100 years ago this country was thought to be moving toward universal literacy.   An odd thing happened circa 1931. The Education Establishment pushed look-say (or...

President Barack Obama on Monday announced more than $100 million in grants for two dozen schools across the country that are helping students gain work experience for what he called the “in-demand jobs of the future.” The money, which comes from fees that companies pay for visas to hire foreign workers for specialized jobs, is the result of an executive order Obama signed last year to better prepare high school students for college or for careers. Students are working on “cooler stuff than when I was in high school,” Obama said as he announced the grants before cheering high school...

Myth-Making Aside, Eugenics Was a Mostly Progressive Enterprise Wesley J. Smith April 6, 2014 4:58 PM | Permalink I have often stated that biologist/eugenicist Charles Davenport (pictured above) was one of the great villains of American history. A new book by Paul Martin, Villains, Scoundrels, and Rogues: Incredible True Tales of Mischief and Mayhem, includes a chapter on this odious man. Good.But -- if the excerpt in Salon is a reliable indication, there may be other agendas afoot in Martin's writing about Davenport. Indeed, a reader of the article would never guess that eugenics was primarily supported by political progressives who rejected human exceptionalism. From "Hitler's Favorite American": What's...

The "Unintelligent" Are Not Wanted in Life! Wesley J. Smith April 3, 2014 | Eugenics is pernicious. Its core philosophy holds that some human beings are better than others based on invidious categorization of human capacities and characteristics.Eugenics leads to oppression and even killing. The old eugenics unleashed involuntary sterilization in the U.S. -- as well as infanticide and the murder of disabled adults in Germany.Those horrors put eugenics into hibernation, but it has awakened in the very places it started in the first place -- among the intelligentsia. Oxford bioethicist Julian Savulescu is a leading neo-eugenicist. Now, he proposes...

A Texas mom thinks it's bull that her 3-year-old girl was expelled from the Jubilee Child Development Center in San Antonio for saying "sh-t," WOAI reported. "I don't condone her saying i,t but for that to be a faith-based day care, I would think that they would reinforce and let her know that's not a word to say," Cassandra Wright told the local station. Wright said she doesn't use that word at home and isn't quite sure how little Arianna heard it in the first place. She even doubts whether she knows what it means. "I asked her what word...

WHEN LaTisha Styles graduated from Kennesaw State University in Georgia in 2006 she had $35,000 of student debt. This obligation would have been easy to discharge if her Spanish degree had helped her land a well-paid job. But there is no shortage of Spanish-speakers in a nation that borders Latin America. So Ms Styles found herself working in a clothes shop and a fast-food restaurant for no more than $11 an hour. Frustrated, she took the gutsy decision to go back to the same college and study something more pragmatic. She majored in finance, and now has a good job...

"A Connecticut community college suspended a student veteran for his aggressive questioning of Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy during a public forum,.... Shortly thereafter, Saucier received notice from the administration that he was suspended on grounds that his “continued presence on campus would present a danger to the persons, property and/or academic process of the College.... The college attempted to persuade Saucier to plead guilty to the charges and undergo counseling. He refused, opting instead for a formal hearing. At the hearing, administrators refused to let him play his recorded video, which he argued would acquit him by showing that he...

Last week, high school senior Kwasi Enin found out he had been accepted to every college he applied to — including all eight Ivy League schools. How did Enin pull off this impressive feat? The Long Island student scored a 2250 on his SAT, had taken 11 AP courses, and was in the top 2% of his graduating class, but that doesn't necessarily show him fully as an applicant. The answer could be in his college application essay, which The New York Post published today.

A lot of Internet ink has been spilled over how lazy and entitled Millennials are, but when it comes to paying for a college education, work ethic isn't the limiting factor. The economic cards are stacked such that today’s average college student, without support from financial aid and family resources, would need to complete 48 hours of minimum-wage work a week to pay for his courses—a feat that would require superhuman endurance, or maybe a time machine. To take a close look at the tuition history of almost any institution of higher education in America is to confront an unfair...

Last week, a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that because members of Northwestern University’s football team seem close enough to “employees” of the university to satisfy the statutory definition, they can proceed in their stated desire for union representation. The United Steelworkers union, hoping for a transfusion of dues money, helped the activist players, led by quarterback Kain Colter, push their petition for a union certification election. Conceivably, the union could wind up negotiating on behalf of the Northwestern players with the university over all matters that are subjects of collective bargaining under the law...

A fifth of Germany’s schoolchildren have problems with simple decision-making tasks, such as selecting the cheapest item from a page in a catalog, results from the global PISA test showed on Tuesday. […] For Germany, the performance was not sparkling, with its children ranking behind those of Australia, Canada, Finland, England and most East Asian countries that took part. Germany only scored slightly higher than the average of the 44 countries that took part. Almost 20 percent failed to reach the OECD’s baseline level. This meant that at best, these pupils could only solve very simple problems that required no...

Seventeen-year-old Kwasi Enin of Shirley took a shot at -- and won -- what amounts to an academic royal flush: He applied to and was accepted at all eight Ivy League schools. But the William Floyd High School senior said he never thought he'd land slots in the class of 2018 at Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale. He hasn't decided where he'll attend, but would cross Long Island Sound to attend Yale in New Haven, Conn., depending on the financial aid package offered.

COPENHAGEN (The Global Edition) – The Copenhagen Zoo has killed several of its staff members early this morning in order to create four new job openings, the Zoo public relations sector reported. Officials of the Zoo say that the four members of the staff were humanely executed after being put to sleep with a lethal injection, and then skinned and chopped up while visitors crowded around and the meat was fed to the lion population.

I just have a question about the political system of the United States that I don't quite understand. Why does it matter which party you are registered for? What effect would it have if, for whatever reason, everybody was registered with one party or another? In Canada, one doesn't have to register with any party and we are completely unhindered from voting for whichever party we wish, so that is the basis for my question. All responses are appreciated.

I have been a Freeper for 12 years and a teacher for 10. I work in Los Angeles, in a public school, and I teach English. I want to say something about Common Core, although my observations will be strictly limited to my particular domain: English. I cannot comment on the Math portion. I will begin bluntly: I do not understand the conservative outcry about Common Core. Perhaps it’s only because I teach in California, but to me it is an improvement, at least in some ways. If you aren’t a teacher (and most conservatives aren’t, which is a pity)...

When Bill and Melinda Gates go to Africa and see healthy people and sick people, they presumably have a single thought: what can we do to make everyone healthy? The problems are easily understood; goals can be clearly stated. Given a big commitment, there’s a high chance of success. ~snip~ What fascinates Bill Gates is something else entirely: namely, the variety and incoherence from school to school, city to city, and state to state. It looks so messy and inefficient. And he thinks: a guy with my money and management skills should be able to organize all this disorder, turn...

Published on Mar 30, 2014 Evacuating a sample of unknown fluid (to vaporize for mass spectrometry). Pressure drop causes a decrease in temperature. The fluid simultaneously both boils and freezes? Would like some insight here...

A stunning 77.6 percent of NYC public-high-school graduates who entered CUNY community colleges as freshmen last fall needed remediation in math, reading or writing, new data show. Despite their high-school diplomas, the grads failed CUNY admission tests in one or more of the key subjects, officials told The Post.

One of the great memes out there in trying to diagnose persistently high unemployment and anemic job growth during what is still, I argue, the Great Recession is the so-called “skills gap�. The idea here is that the fact that there are millions of unfilled job openings at the same time millions of people can’t find work can be chalked up to a lack of a skills match between unemployed workers an open positions. To pick one random example out of many, here’s the way US News and World Report put it last year: Some 82 percent of manufacturers say...