Free Republic

Under legislation authored by San Diego State Sen. Marty Block, as many as 15 colleges statewide could offer degrees in fields such as health information management, dental hygiene and biomanufacturing. Community colleges in the state currently offer 2-year degrees. KNX 1070’s Pete Demetriou reports California’s Community College Board of Governors is set to select the schools on Tuesday afternoon in Sacramento. “It would allow 15 pilot community college baccalaureates over the next few years in California,” said California Community Colleges Chancellor Brice Harris. “Most of those will be in workforce-related areas.”

A gigantic but fleeting burst of radio waves has been caught in the act for the first time, helping to narrow down the vast array of things that might cause them. Figuring out what these fast radio bursts are or where they come from could help answer some of the biggest cosmological questions. They last about a millisecond but give off as much energy as the sun does in a day, all seemingly in a tight band of radio-frequency waves. Their source is a mystery, but whatever causes them must be huge, cataclysmic and up to 5.5 billion light years...

In a breathless, Drudge Report-linked headline, the Washington Post reported last week that the “Majority of U.S. public school students are in poverty.” A Huffington Post piece by Rebecca Klein, published 12 minutes earlier, sported a similar headline, “More Than Half Of American Schoolchildren Now Live In Poverty.” The only problem with these headlines, and the stories beneath them, is that they aren’t true—not even close. Both pieces were triggered by a report from the Southern Education Foundation. In 2013, some 19.9 percent of children in America were in families with income at the poverty line or below—in 2014, the...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Many of the students at Kingsley Elementary School in a low-income neighborhood of Los Angeles eat breakfast and lunch provided by the school. For the nearly 100 enrolled in the after-school program, another meal is served: supper. The nation’s second largest school district is doubling the number of students served dinner, with an eye toward eventually offering it at every school. It’s a growing trend: Nationwide, the number of students served dinner or an after-school snack soared to nearly 1 million last year. “When kids are hungry, they don’t pay attention,” said Bennett Kayser, a member...

In the Darwin Debate, How Long Before the Tide Turns in Favor of Intelligent Design? Casey Luskin January 19, 2015 4:36 PM | Permalink A student emails me to ask how long it will be before the "tide turns from Darwinism to ID." He follows the debate over intelligent design and is aware that the Darwin lobby's rhetoric typically fails to address ID's actual arguments (which are scientific in nature), instead focusing on personal attacks or trying to claim ID is religion. This student feels it is obvious that ID has the upper hand in the argument, but wonders when...

The first school in Britain for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people could open its doors within the next three years. Based in the centre of Manchester, the specialist state school plans to take 40 full-time students from across the area and will offer up to 20 part-time places for young people who want to continue attending a mainstream school. “This is about saving lives,” said Amelia Lee, strategic director for LGBT Youth North West, the youth work charity behind the plans. “Despite the laws that claim to protect gay people from homophobic bullying, the truth is that in...

China’s leadership has issued guidelines requiring universities to strengthen ideological controls in classrooms and telling professors to champion Marxism, traditional culture and socialist core values. The orders come as President Xi Jinping tightens his grip on political power and cracks down on the encroachment of supposed Western values such as press freedom and civil society groups. […] … Willy Lam, a political analyst at Chinese University in Hong Kong, said other professors were reporting tighter controls, including government monitors filing covert reports on classroom lectures. Control over professors has significantly tightened since Xi took power in late 2012, Lam said....

California Teacher Allegedly Arranged Beach Trip For Sex With Students (Pics in URL) By AMY HUBBARD AND EMILY ALPERT REYES Two female Southern California teachers had sex with male high school students during an overnight beach camping trip that one of the teachers orchestrated, authorities say. Melody Lippert, 38, and Michelle Ghirelli, 30, are set to be arraigned in Orange County on Wednesday. A student Ghirelli is accused of having sex with was under 18 years old, while Lippert allegedly had sex with a student who was 18, according to the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

I need information and opinions of Montessori schools. I'm thinking about sending my 5-y.o. granddaughter to one. Many thanks in advance.

The couple thought that they finally had everything lined up: Their paperwork for a marriage license, their attendance to mandatory counseling, and — just to be safe — an order from Mexico's Supreme Court to honor their request to complete the first same-sex union in the state of Baja California. But on January 11, in their fourth attempt at marriage since June 2013 in Mexicali, Baja's desert capital, Victor Manuel Aguirre and Victor Fernando Urias were met with closed doors and once more couldn't get married. Instead, religious conservatives picketed the municipal registrar offices (along with alleged non-interested parties meant...

The full weight of the failed Enlightenment experiment over-taxes the load bearing pillars that prop up a decaying Western Civilization, pillars that are buckling under the sheer weight of moral corruption on full display in modern society. The ethical structures of the West are in desperate need of repair. This new age is best characterized by the Weird Sisters crowing pronouncement “Fair is foul, and foul is fair, Hover through the fog and filthy air.” The inversion of values has been a massive moral de-construction project that has taken the time honored vertical hierarchy of virtues and vices and turned...

[Summary: To save public schools, we have to fix the underlying sophistries and fallacies.] ---- When we contemplate public schools, two things are certain. Almost everyone agrees that the schools are not as good as they should be, given the huge effort and expenditure. Second, everyone has a theory. You can hardly read a newspaper without some expert telling you yet another reason why the public schools are a mess. Much blame is heaped on parents. Other culprits include popular culture, the Internet, teachers, the students themselves, and of course, the perennial favorite, not enough money. We are often told,...

Hi all! I have a 5 month old puppy. He is (I was told) 1/2 German Shepard + 1/2 Rottweiler. He is also astonishingly intelligent, very easy to train, great memory. Anyway, he already knows sit, stay, come, lay, play dead, and fetch. On his 5 month birthday he weighed exactly 40 pounds. Here are my questions:If he is 40 pounds at exactly five months, what will likely be his weight when fully grown?I would like recommendations on what other commands would be useful? I am already planning to teach him to heel. He learns so quickly that I think...

Time and time again, California proves itself to be a what-not-to-do handbook for states looking to responsibly balance their budgets. This reputation was clearly on display by the University of California Board of Regents’ decision to increase the cost of tuition by 25 percent over the next five years. The increased tuition won’t be going to make improvements for students but rather will almost certainly go directly into funding for UC’s underfunded and mismanaged pension system. The University of California Retirement Plan (UCRP) is facing a major shortfall. In making sure that it is funded adequately enough to pay current...

Should Arizona require high school students to pass a civics test to earn a diploma? yes no

A student at the University of Central Oklahoma was arrested in a prostitution sting at his Edmond apartment. Investigators with the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control and Oklahoma City police arrested Ali Hussain Al Yousuf, 24, on complaints of maintaining a house where prostitution takes place and aiding in prostitution. Al Yousuf was enrolled in classes at UCO this semester, a UCO spokeswoman said Thursday. University of Central Oklahoma student is arrested in prostitution stingOn Jan. 8, an OBN agent working undercover responded to an online escort ad and arranged to meet with a woman in an...

DURHAM, N.C. — Two days after announcing that Islamic students would be broadcasting a weekly call to prayer from the Duke Chapel bell tower, Duke University officials abandoned that plan Thursday, citing the furor the move had created.

Ontario Catholic parents hoping their children attending a Catholic school will be spared an explicit sex-education curriculum that allegedly will teach their children about masturbation, to question their sexual identity as male or female, and about diverse family structures are out of luck. Education Minister Liz Sandals stated on TVO’s The Agenda yesterday that Catholic schools will not be able to opt out of the curriculum being forced upon Ontario’s schools by lesbian Premier, Kathleen Wynne. “There is one curriculum document, and it’s our expectation that all four systems [English and French Catholic, English and French public] will be using...

The “Vagina Monologues” was once a yearly tradition at Mount Holyoke College, an all-women’s school in Massachusetts. But not this year. The reason? Apparently the show is no longer feminist enough and actually hurts women because it doesn’t include monologues from trans-women. Suddenly, the most feminist play in America is both transphobic and racist. “At its core, the show offers an extremely narrow perspective on what it means to be a woman,” wrote Erin Murphy, a representative for the school’s Theatre Board, said in a campus-wide email obtained by Campus Reform. “Gender is a wide and varied experience, one that...

Free Will Is Real and Materialism Is Wrong Michael Egnor January 15, 2015 11:09 AM | Permalink I've written before in reply to materialist Jerry Coyne's assertion that free will is an illusion. The gist of Coyne's denial, shared by others of course, is that nature is deterministic and that the mind is a wholly material process, yoked to the laws of physics and to an organism's evolutionary history. Thus, our choices are completely determined and free will is an illusion.I've already pointed out his error on the question of determinism. Today I'll focus on his error regarding the materiality/immateriality...