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Notwithstanding What Bill Nye Says, the Sun is Not an "Unremarkable" Star Daniel Bakken December 1, 2014 2:18 AM | Permalink For a planet to be habitable, its star must also meet certain standards. Many stars are in multiple star systems, yet for the stability of a habitable planet, single stars are likely required, contrary to science fiction's frequent double sunsets. Simulations show that only if a double star is in a very tight arrangement, so that the two stars are essentially like a single star, or if the second star is in an extremely wide orbit, would the necessary...

An epidemic of whooping cough has broken out in California. Not long ago, this ancient scourge had been banished by modern medicine. But now it’s back, thanks to people who believe modern medicine is dangerous. These folks are not ignorant backwoods hicks. Many of them have advanced degrees. They live in some of the nicest neighbourhoods on Earth – places like Marin County, Napa and Malibu. But they believe that vaccines cause autism or worse. Immunization rates in some of the more fashionable California schools resemble those in the more backward parts of Africa. At the Valley Waldorf City School...

[Summary; Ray Rice made a mess of his life. Arguably, David Coleman is making a mess of American education.]....Early morning hours. They got drunk and had a fight. She spit on him and hit him. He hit her back. She was unconscious on the floor. A punch or a slap? Too drunk to stand up? Initially, the event was treated as a trivial physical altercation. A month later they got married. Next, Rice was indicted on a third-degree assault charge and accepted into a first offender’s program. Now the wife was saying, please leave us alone and stop talking about...

DAVIS (CBS13) — A UC Davis economics professorhas determined there is no American Dream. Gregory Clark is sharing his research as a hard truth with no hope—whether or not you can get ahead in America is as predictable as any formula. In fact, he says, the formulas for social mobility in the United States show there’s nothing to dream about. “America has no higher rate of social mobility than medieval England, Or pre-industrial Sweden,” he said. “That’s the most difficult part of talking about social mobility is because it is shattering people s dreams.” Clark crunched the numbers in the...

On March 6, 1799, President John Adams issued a proclamation “Recommending a National Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer”--for “thanksgiving to the Author of All Good.” Among the things Adams wished Americans would ask God on this day was to make American schools teach not only sound science but also sound morals and religion. Americans, Adams said, should ask God to “smile on our colleges, academies, schools, and seminaries of learning, and make them nurseries of sound science, morals, and religion.”

Five minute video at link. What do you think?

Useful information to know using leverage, but doesn't cover being bound with hands to the back. Enjoy.

Www.heyjackass.com

As a former academic, headlines describing what appear to be questionable policies or practices in institutions of higher learning usually get my attention. When the fine print implicates a philosophy department, a subject I used to teach, I take a close look. Now, suppose you are an undergraduate at a large, private Catholic university that is one of the 28 member institutions of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. You decide to enroll in a course given by the philosophy department that will explore the intersection between ethical theories and contemporary controversies -- a course of the sort I...

We haven’t even had time to hang the mistletoe and would you believe there are already skirmishes breaking out in the war on Christmas? The latest yuletide battleground is Butler Elementary School in Belmont, Mass. Over the years I’ve covered my fair share of anti-Christmas school house shenanigans. There was the dimwit who confiscated a child’s candy canes and the dunderheads who banned the colors red and green. And how can we forget about the simpletons who outlawed classroom poinsettias or the Junior League communists who rewrote the lyrics to "Silent Night"? But those are junior varsity skirmishes compared to...

Nearly a century ago, Harvard had a big problem: Too many Jews. By 1922, Jews accounted for 21.5 percent of freshmen, up from 7 percent in 1900 and vastly more than at Yale or Princeton. In the Ivy League, only Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania had a greater proportion of Jews. Harvard’s president, A. Lawrence Lowell, warned that the “Jewish invasion” would “ruin the college.” He wanted a cap: 15 percent. When faculty members balked, he stacked the admissions process to achieve the same result. Bolstered by the nativism of the time, which led to sharp immigration restrictions, Harvard’s...

It's a Christmas miracle! An elementary school in a Boston suburb that was going to cancel its annual trip to see The Nutcracker has decided allowing kids to see a Christmas tree on stage will not destroy the non-Christians in the audience. According to whdh.com: The trip to see the famous ballet has been a tradition at the school for years, but apparently some felt the trip was improper because there is a Christmas tree on the stage. The issue came to a head at a [Butler Elementary School] PTA meeting Tuesday night. A source said some people were told...

There's a Gene for That...Or Is There? Denyse O'Leary November 24, 2014 3:30 AM | Permalink A CNN headline reports, "Blame genetics for bad driving, study finds." "Genes for," however, are dangerous words in genetics. Recently, we looked at evolutionary psychology, the attempt to explain current human behavior as being governed by natural selection acting on how hominoid/hominin/human groups lived hundreds of thousands of years ago, so that the behavior is now encoded in the genes and brains of survivors. For example, we were told recently that men may have better navigation skills than women because these skills assist them...

New York has sent a warning to its schools: Expect more illegal immigrants. The city Department of Education has told principals it plans this year to enroll 2,350 migrant children from Central America who crossed into the United States unaccompanied — with many more to come.

This Season, the Engineers Are Going to Playoffs, but They Once Competed in Hand-Me-Downs CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—In the 1970s, on this campus known for scientific innovation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology students engineered a rather unlikely experiment: a football team. MIT had no intercollegiate football squad at the time. The student body in 1901 voted 119-117 to discontinue it. So one day in 1978, a group of MIT students huddled and created a team that would play its first game that fall. No one else at the school had any clue. There were times when fielding a football team at MIT seemed...

Let’s face it: school lunches are not exactly culinary masterpieces. But some fed-up students have been sharing some down-right disgusting-looking meals using the hashtag #ThanksMichelleObama on social media. It’s not a new thing. These posts have been around when school started up in August. But as students get ready for the year’s biggest food holiday, the trend is picking up steam. …

FULL TITLE: Shocking moment teacher DRAGGED girl, 14, across floor and into pool after she refused to swim because she'd just had her hair done A video has been released capturing the shocking moment a gym teacher dragged a 14-year-old girl to a pool after she refused to swim because she didn't want to ruin her hair. Denny Peterson, who worked at Edison High School in Stockton, California, is now facing a charge of corporal injury to a child. The incident took place in August after the girl refused to get in the pool because her hair was done that...

Getting a college education is expensive, which is why more students are taking the time to search for affordable colleges with high four-year graduation rates. In the United States, about two-thirds of students who earn a bachelor’s degree graduate from college in four years, while the remaining 34 percent need a fifth or even sixth year to complete their studies (U.S. Department of Education). Completing an undergraduate degree in four years is not only easier on the budget, but it means getting out into the workforce earlier than students who need more time to graduate. Choosing an affordable college is...

The Miami media finally got around to reporting a little bit about the shooter at FSU. NOTHING, however, about the victims. I have seen enough liberal media to know that if the shooter were white and had shot two or three black students, RACISM would be the drumbeat.... In this case, the shooter was black....but the victims have not been identified.