One student reporting the demonstration for the school paper, Amber Critchley, said the protesters believe it was an improper use of the surveillance video, which is primarily a security feature.Good for them.
Classes continued during the disruption, said Principal Greg Schellenberg. He said he congratulated the students on holding a peaceful demonstration. The protesters wore T-shirts that said "free love" and waved peace signs.
Some students use iPod-compatible voice recorders to record test answers in advance and them play them back, said 16-year-old Mountain View junior Damir Bazdar.That's it. I'm banning resting, too.
Others download crib notes onto the music players and hide them in the "lyrics" text files. Even an audio clip of the old "Schoolhouse Rock" take on how a bill makes it through Congress can come in handy during some American government exams.
Kelsey Nelson, a 17-year-old senior at the school, said she used to listen to music after completing her tests - something she can no longer do since the ban. Still, she said, the ban has not stopped some students from using the devices.
"You can just thread the earbud up your sleeve and then hold it to your ear like you're resting your head on your hand," Nelson said.
I believe that Dartmouth College philosopher Adina Roskies is right when she suggests "knowing that one part of our biological system for identifying persons is automatically entrained and subject to error should make us more cognizant of its operation and more skeptical of its output as we engage in the countless moral decisions we make each day." If Farah and Heberlein have correctly identified an innate personhood network in our brains, they will have helped free us from its mandates, just as other natural scientists freed us from our misconceptions about the sources of disease and rain. We are not just slaves to our brains' personhood networks -- we can use our rationality to figure out which entities count as persons and which do not. We will most likely conclude that personhood is a continuum, not an all or nothing property. Just where to draw moral lines along that continuum will be a long hard fought debate, but as Sagoff has pointed out moral progress can be made. In the end, Farah and Heberlein are wrong, persons are as real as mountains, diseases, weeds, pets and daylight.
Back when nation-building and "peacemaking" were anathema to Republicans, a younger John McCain warned that a drawn out engagement in Somalia was the only true danger to American prestige. No timetable, he argued: let's withdraw immediately.
Times change, eh?
Restrictions on the use of security videotape have been tightened at a suburban Tacoma high school after images of two girls kissing were shown to the parents of one of the girls, officials say.Quantifiable concerns: five. Count 'em.
Keith Nelson, dean of students at Gig Harbor High School, said he saw the students kissing and holding hands in the school's busy commons, checked a surveillance camera and showed the parents the tape because they had asked him a few weeks earlier to alert them to any conduct by their daughter that was out of the ordinary.
They then transferred their daughter to a school outside the Peninsula School District, which lies northwest of Tacoma.
Both girls said their privacy was invaded and denied doing anything wrong. Neither was identified by name in an article published Thursday by The News Tribune of Tacoma.
The kiss amounted to a quick "peck," said the girl who remains at the school, a 17-year-old senior described as the daughter of a News Tribune employee.
"We weren't doing anything inappropriate, nothing anyone else wouldn't do," she said.
Nelson said students could not have any expectation of privacy in a crowded place and maintained that he would have taken the same action had the students kissing been a boy and a girl.
"They're paying good money for us to make their kids good citizens," he said. "Whatever that means to the parents, I'll do it."
1) Those who fought the battles of the '70s and '80s know how hard the profession had to fight to get collective bargaining and earn the gains we have. Many new teachers don't have that background--the association has always been there and always been powerful, to them--and as a result there's not the fire that you see from some of the experienced folks.The WEA has people like Brooke Mattox and Rich Wood who have ramped up the union's web presence--but mostly for members, not for the general public. Rich in particular is hip to the new media, and his sentiments are shared by some in leadership, but Ryan is right: we're second-rate. Sure, bloggers like Ryan are beating the drum daily, and the "Take the Lead" concept is a step toward progress, but until the WEA starts aggregating blogs, starts getting bloggers signed on, and seriously develops an instant response team, it's going to keep getting pantsed by the more prolific.
2) A side effect is that the WEA narrative becomes passe, because it's the only one they know. If a group like the EFF comes along and presents a good case, visually appealing, accessible through the technology that the new teachers use....we're setting ourselves up for a fall.
The WEA has the resources. They have the personality. During a legislative session like the one we just had I think it's criminal they don't do something like a weekly podcast to get the message out. Give us interviews with our elected WEA exec board, where they talk about the union and why we're still vital. Bring in the experts on ProCert, National Board, retirement, and all the other things that really matter.
Where is the voice of the WEA?
Daniel GilbertA common theme among many of those quoted: charity and empathy for others based on the recognition of the fallibility and fragility of normalcy. I second that emotion.
Because it is so difficult to know whether a particular brain change will be invisible or catastrophic, I try to change mine as little as possible.
Joshua Greene
Knowing this helps me tolerate the contradictions in myself and others: Am I happy? Did she do that intentionally? Can people change? These questions never have single answers because we're not single things.
David Linden
This knowledge should prevent me from trying to get away with these behaviors, but it doesn't. Neurobiological insight just makes me feel like even more of an idiot afterward.
At the Representative Assembly's annual meeting at Emerald Downs on Monday, an amendment that could potentially limit outside pay and gifts to high-school coaches passed by a 49-4 count.No word on the proposed booing ban; that may mean it's a dead letter. I'll post an update if that changes.
Fair or not, Goncharoff, the football coach who has led Bellevue to five state championships in the past six years, became the face of Substitute Amendment 12, which states that "Coaching stipends and all gifts to a coach exceeding a total of $500 in a season must be approved by the school's board of directors."
A school-district investigation into the Bellevue football program last year revealed that boosters pay Goncharoff $55,000 in addition to his coaching stipend from the district of about $5,600. The district, unaware of the pay, last fall asked the WIAA to look into putting limits on booster clubs' ability to pay coaches.
The WIAA elected to put that decision in the hands of school boards.
Every little boy and girlThis time, no apologies to anyone.
Stuck down in a limbo world
In between is gonna stay
'Til the Pope decides to say.
Every dude and every chick
Has to wait for Benedict.
All around the limbo clock
Hey, let's do the limbo rock.
Six, five, four now,
Three, two, one now,
How low will he go?
Is a fetus on the list?
How about a blastocyst?
What of embryos on ice?
Is there room in Paradise?
Foreign folks who never heard,
For nobody brought the Word?
I sure hope they meet the test,
'Cause my conscience needs some rest.
Zygote, embryo, fetus now,
Aborigine, autochthon now,
Please, Your Grace: is there space?
If you're under seventeen,
And your slate is pretty clean,
Keep on floating in your hope,
'Cause it's now up to the Pope.
If you want to go to heaven,
Gotta wait until '07.
So enjoy the edge of bliss
Stuck in a "hypothesis."
Pope please move that limbo bar,
You'll be a limbo star.
How low will you go?
One of Day's theories about RadioShack's continued solvency involves wedding DJs, emergency cord replacement, and off-brand wireless telephones. Another theory entails countless RadioShack gift cards that sit unredeemed in their recipients' wallets. Day has even conjectured that the store is "still coasting on" an enormous fortune made from remote-control toy cars in the mid-1970s.I spent two summers working at a Radio Shack dealership (no, not a "company store") in Elma, running a one-hour photo lab on the side. We sold a lot of cell phones, a few transistors, a CB antenna now and then, some RC cars around Christmas. Some of my fondest memories:
Day admitted, however, that none of these theories seems particularly plausible.
"I once went into a RadioShack location incognito in order to gauge customer service," Day said. "It was about as inviting as a visit to the DMV. For the life of me, I couldn't see anything I wanted to buy. Finally, I figured I'd pick up some Enercell AA batteries, though truthfully they're not appreciably cheaper than the name brands."
"I know one thing," Day continued. "If Sony and JVC start including gold-tipped cable cords with their products, we're screwed."
Key Democrats wanted to delay the reading and writing portions of the test as well as math and science, but Gov. Christine Gregoire balked at that.Check out the rest of the article to get the rundown on the budget, all $33 billion of it.
In the end, the governor won. Legislators passed a bill that delayed only the math and science portions of the test. Students in the class of 2008 would still have to pass the reading and writing portions.
Lawmakers also included other provisions, such as an expanded appeals process for students who fail one or more sections of the test.
Marty Brown, Gregoire's legislative liaison, said that although the governor supports the delay for the math and science requirement, it's not clear what other parts of the bill she might keep or veto.
Rep. Dave Quall, D-Mount Vernon, chairman of the House Education Committee, said he hopes the governor "will honor the majority of what's in the bill. I fully understand her veto pen might be there, but we would hope she'd honor the work that we've done."
Gregoire's policy director, Marty Brown, said the governor would accept the delay to 2013, but would have to examine the rest of the measure before deciding whether to sign it all or veto sections, as state law allows.It also adds what I was expecting would be the eventual outcome: students would have to continue taking other math courses, so there's still an advantage to passing the darn thing and being done with it.
"I think she was just glad that they're done; it was finally on paper," Brown said, adding that a lot of the measure "is sort of new stuff."
The House voted to end a retirement benefit for some state workers Saturday, likely ensuring the end of “gain sharing.”Republicans got to play the "a promise is a promise" card on this one, but lost. I'll take earlier retirement, though, if I can get it. To borrow a phrase from Delmar O'Donnell, "I'll only be 62."
Democrats said the benefit, once thought to cost essentially nothing, will cost too much in the future. In exchange for ending the program, they plan to lower state workers’ retirement age by three years.
"Talking" CCTV cameras that tell off people dropping litter or committing anti-social behaviour are to be extended to 20 areas across England.Not surprisingly, kids are being dragged in:
They are already used in Middlesbrough where people seen misbehaving can be told to stop via a loudspeaker, controlled by control centre staff.
About £500,000 will be spent adding speaker facilities to existing cameras.
Competitions would also be held at schools in many of the areas for children to become the voice of the cameras, Mr Reid said.This coming just a day after I introduced students to Orwell's novel / cliché. And I thought distributed snitching was creepy.
Gov. Christine Gregoire this week marked National Poetry Month by signing legislation that creates the new post of poet laureate....I humbly nominate myself.
The governor and state Arts Commission will appoint the honoree after getting recommendations from a special screening committee. The laureate must be a state resident and would hold a two-year appointment.
It's not a get-rich position, since the state budget provides only $30,000 in startup costs for the first two years, including a stipend and expense money for the poet-in-chief. Other states typically give an honorarium of between $2,000 and $5,000 a year. Future financing will come from private grants, donations and endowments, rather than the state budget....
The legislation, which passed after 12 years of efforts by sponsors, takes effect in 90 days. The choice for poet laureate could be announced this fall.
What could explain this change in the intellectual climate? I think that one of the things which brought about this pro-narrativist change is the downfall of modernism in literature. Modernists such as French writer Alain Robbe-Grillet wanted to do away with ordinary storytelling. Ordinary stories were regarded as superficial and without any power to show the real nature of human life. Human life is simply not like a narrative, the modernists thought. This anti-narrativism had its heyday when Schapp was writing his books, so no wonder he was ignored. Then in the Sixties post-modernism arrived on the scene and telling stories in novels became all the rage again. Great storytellers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez were the darling of the literati. Believing in the redeeming quality of stories is now in vogue. Every day someone publishes a book telling you how you can become rich / famous / happy / popular by telling stories.Though Snaevarr keeps his focus on the positive, we can also imagine the breakdown of identity as the dissolution of a coherent narrative, as is often the case in the work of Dr. Oliver Sacks.
My aim in the remains of this article is more modest. I want to introduce to you the thought of two celebrated narrativists.
Police say they have arrested 16-year-old student at Todd Beamer High School and found three loaded guns plus extra ammunition Thursday.
The emergency prompted a lockdown of the school during afternoon classes....
Diane Turner of the Federal Way School District says a student text messaged their parent that another student had brought a weapon to school.
The parent contacted the school. A resource officer pulled the boy out of class.
Stacy Flores of Federal Way Police [says] the guns were stolen this morning in a burglary in Pierce County. She says the student was planning to sell the guns, not to use them.
In the photo, the killer brandishes a hammer - the signature weapon of the protagonist in "Oldboy" - in a pose similar to one from the film.Ironically, the film--and the trilogy--is about the ultimate futility of revenge. Of course, with all his references to Christ and crucifixion, it's equally plausible that Hui was "inspired" by The Passion of the Christ. Even more plausible, he saw Taxi Driver, and went the way of Travis Bickle--or some bizarre combination of the three.
The 2003 film, directed by Chan-wook Park, won the Gran Prix prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004. The second of Park's "Vengeance Trilogy," the movie is about a man unjustly imprisoned for 15 years. After escaping, he goes on a rampage against his captor. In one scene, he dispatches over a dozen henchmen with the aid of a hammer.
The connection was spotted by Professor Paul Harris of Virginia Tech, who then alerted the authorities, according to London's Evening Standard.
The "Vengeance Trilogy" is difficult, painful to watch, and obsessed with depicting revenge as the ultimate act of narcissism—a way to wallow in your problems and proclaim "Oh, poor me" with a hammer.
Unless a person has developed a high tolerance, a BAC rating of 0.20 represents very serious intoxication (most first-time drinkers would be passed out by about 0.15), and 0.35 represents potentially fatal alcohol poisoning. 0.40 is the accepted LD50, or lethal dose for 50% of adult humans. For a long-time, heavy drinker, those numbers can at least double. In extreme cases, individuals have survived BAC ratings as high as 0.914.I don't even want to know how to get a BAC that high.
A chilling picture emerged today of Cho Seung-Hui — a 23-year-old senior majoring in English — a day after the bloodbath that left 33 people dead, including Cho, who killed himself as police closed in.We may never know if Seung-Hui suffered from a brain tumor, along the lines of Charles Whitman, but all the signs of an imploding personality consistent with some kind of neurological malady showed before the shooting.
News reports said that he may have been taking medication for depression and that he was becoming increasingly violent and erratic....
Professor Carolyn Rude, chairwoman of the university's English department, said Cho's writing was so disturbing that he had been referred to the university's counseling service.
"Sometimes, in creative writing, people reveal things and you never know if it's creative or if they're describing things, if they're imagining things or just how real it might be," Rude said. "But we're all alert to not ignore things like this...."
The Chicago Tribune reported on its Web site that the note railed against "rich kids," "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans" on campus. ABC, citing law enforcement sources, said that the note, several pages long, explains Cho's actions and says, "You caused me to do this."
Citing unidentified sources, the Tribune also said Cho had recently set a fire in a dorm room and had stalked some women....
In a small department, Cho distinguished himself for being anonymous. "He didn't reach out to anyone. He never talked," Poole said.
"We just really knew him as the question mark kid," Poole said.
NBC said that a time stamp on the package indicated the material was mailed in the two-hour window between the first burst of gunfire in a high-rise dormitory and the second fusillade, at a classroom building. Thirty-three people died in the rampage, including the gunman, 23-year-old student Cho Seung-Hui, who committed suicide.
The package included digital images of him holding weapons and a manifesto that "rants against rich people and warns that he wants to get even," according to a law enforcement official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the case.
MSNBC said that the package included a CD-ROM on which Cho read his manifesto.
In order to justify ongoing [human cloning] research, these intellectuals and others like them today are willing to shed not only traditional religious views but any view of human distinctiveness and special dignity, their own included. They fail to see that the scientific view of man they celebrate does more than insult our vanity. It undermines our self-conception as free, thoughtful, and responsible beings, worthy of respect because we alone among the animals have minds and hearts that aim far higher than the mere perpetuation of our genes. It undermines, as well, the beliefs that sustain our mores, practices, and institutions–including the practice of science. The problem lies not so much with the scientific findings themselves as with the shallow philosophy that recognizes no other truths but these and, and with the arrogant pronouncements of the bio-prophets.Me:
Why does a proper respect for human dignity require “human exceptionalism,” and a bizarrely relative view of dignity? If we were to discover other creatures of similar intelligence in the universe, would that somehow invalidate the scientific enterprise because it would knock us off our anthropocentric perch? This is a grand non sequitur.Wesley J. Smith:
You don’t believe there is a hierarchy of moral worth? You don’t think humans have moral duties no other species in the known universe has? You don’t think human beings are exceptional? Then why are we required, as we should be, to save endangered species but seals and elephants aren’t? Ah, it is because only we understand or care about the concept. Why? Because we are exceptional.Smith leaps to the assumption that I don't find humans exceptional, recapitulating the same non sequitur. I actually agree that, as far as we know, humans are unique in their moral and reasoning ability--whether in degree or in kind, I'm not certain. Call this "soft exceptionalism."
The self loathing of many is amazing to me. Thanks for writing, Jim.
My wife keeps uploading photos of Úbeda and the surrounding countryside, so I keep dutifully posting them to her blog. The third set is now available.Elisabeth Gilster De Velazquez, associate professor of marketing at Roanoke College in Salem, Va., says issuing coupons, whether they're for free burritos or buy-one-get-one-free French fries, hasn't been successful for chains on a regular basis.Indeed they are. I won't eat at Subway unless I like the $2.50 Daily Special. Arby's sees me once a month, the day after the coupon sheet arrives in the mail. Burger King? Are you joking?
"In the long run it's going to hurt them if they keep doing it," Velazquez says. "If you keep using them over time, your consumers are not going to want to pay full price again. They're going to get used to the reduced prices or the free stuff. You're conditioning your consumers to conceive that your product doesn't have the same value as it would at full price."
The benefit for consumers is, obviously, the free food. But Velazquez says they should be aware of the restaurant's ulterior motive, which is to get customers in the door to redeem those free-food coupons and, hopefully, bring their friends or buy other items on the menu.Isn't an "ulterior" motive a hidden, sneaky sort of motive? Giving away coupons is more than a little transparent.
After all, she said, "People love free stuff."
This summer, he plans to hit the weight room -- he says his bench press is up from 185 to 230 pounds -- more than ever. Redick will play for the Magic's summer-league team and for Team USA "as long as my invitation is still good."That would make it disappointing, right?
"I'm going to put pressure on myself this summer," he said. "I'm going to put in the work. I can't predict where I'll be, but I know I'll be a better player.
"I'd give myself a 'C' this year. Some say I've had a disappointing year. I say average. And I never want to be average."
Cursive penmanship is becoming a casualty of the digital age. Last year, of the nearly 1.5 million high-school students who took the SAT, only 15 percent used cursive on the essay portion, according to the College Board.Research shows that the students who wrote in cursive on the SAT scored slightly higher. No word on if it was because they were faster writers and better thinkers, or whether scorers were too lazy to decipher the scrawl, and decided it was probably by a smartypants anyway and thus worth a better score.
Under pressure to meet testing standards, teachers are devoting less time to penmanship practice. A 2003 survey of primary teachers by Vanderbilt University found that the average classroom gets fewer than 10 minutes a day of penmanship instruction.
In Washington, state standards allow printing or cursive, as long as it is legible. Local districts start teaching cursive in the primary grades. The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction also encourages districts to offer initial keyboarding instruction in the kindergarten through eighth grade.
Most students master basic keyboard skills, which students and educators nationwide say are increasingly taking precedence over pen and paper.
Three years ago, Grace Bratzel, a 15-year-old freshman at Christ's Household of Faith school in St. Paul, won a national cursive penmanship competition with 130,000 entrants. But today, she said, she mostly prints or uses a computer.
"Cursive is prettier and more artistic, but manuscript is more natural and instinctive," she said. "When it's really important, I write on the computer so the teachers don't judge the work on how it's presented."
The inimitable Steve Reeves holds his own against Thebans, amnesia, and Eddie Izzard, who appears at the :53 mark.
Best viewed in the MST3K version.
Joel: "I think we can probe deeper into the phenomenological basis for Hercules' experience."
Crow: "Discarding the classical dualistic view, of course."
But there is a price to pay, and it is precisely what the Kochen-Specker theorem warned of: the demise of simple truth and falsity. For all its drawbacks, Boolean algebra does at least allow every statement about our universe to be either true or false. Yet this turns out to be the exception among all the different types of algebras - including the one underpinning quantum theory. The logic associated with quantum topoi encompasses true, false and many shades of grey in between.Postmodern sciency mumbo-jumbo, or a radical revision of the way we understand--or is it construct--reality?
Does that mean we must accept a universe that is real, but about which any question will receive myriad answers, all of them true? According to Isham and his colleagues, the answer - appropriately enough - is both yes and no. If we are content to view reality through the window of classical physics, then we can enjoy straightforward true/false answers to our questions - as long as we avoid the realm of atoms. But if we insist on making statements about atoms, we must use the logic of quantum topoi and accept the existence of a whole host of realities, all as valid as each other.
And that might just be the start; after all, there are more topoi than just the standard and quantum ones. In a series of papers unveiled last month, Isham proposes an even more mind-bending idea: there may be myriad ways of viewing reality, each based on its own topos. Together with Andreas Doering of Imperial, he has shown that every physical system - from an electron to the whole universe - has a unique mathematical identity that dictates how it will appear when viewed through the prism of a particular topos.
Seen via the topos of set theory, an atom takes on its classical appearance with nice, well-defined properties. Viewed through the topos associated with quantum theory, it becomes altogether fuzzier and strange.
We needn't stop there. Why not opt for another topos? It could lead to a view of reality even more astonishing and successful than quantum theory. "What we're hoping is that topos theory becomes the basis for a whole new way of constructing theories", says Isham.
A counterfeit memory like "I still remember when I first got my library card" can easily be assigned to someone else. A real memory like my long-held prejudice against all librarians and the petty tyranny that led me to it cannot. This leads us to the deeper phoniness that hobbles the assembly-line anchorperson-commentary racket CBS News has been running for decades. If person A is going to express a personal memory or opinion on behalf of person B, and person B is not someone who identifies publicly with specific positions on matters of public debate—something network news anchors (outside of Fox, anyway) are discouraged from doing—then person A will hew carefully to anodyne sentiment. The result is commentary devoid of any substance or interest.The antidote is a splash of cold blogging.
The promise of the Internet-as-Alexandria is more than the roiling plenitude of information. It's the ability of individuals to choreograph that information in idiosyncratic ways, the hope that individuals might feel invited by the gravitational pull of a broad and open commons to "rip, mix, and burn"--to curate. This new sort of curator, in effect, is one definition of a blogger: an amateur experimental librarian for the Internet... It's not that the Dewey decimal system isn't in some sense designed for associative browsability; it's that the Dewey decimal system is a helpful but ossified structure best suited to the bureaucratic centralization of thousands of different libraries.... Every Library of Alexandria on some broad boulevard needs Prelinger libraries tucked away in the alleys behind.
Washington voters will get the final say on a state constitutional amendment to allow simple majority approval of local property tax levies for public schools.Smaller, rural, struggling districts are primed to benefit most; if all goes well, 40% of voters won't get to decide their fate. We'll hold off celebrating, though, until the people have their say.
The state Senate passed the measure on a 33-16 vote today, just squeaking past the two-thirds vote needed.
"This is a long time in coming," said Sen. Tracey Eide, D-Federal Way. "I feel just as passionate today as I did in '93 about this piece of legislation. I'm a mom and I care about every single child in the state of Washington."
The House already passed the measure, so it now heads to voters who must approve it by a simple majority.
It currently takes a 60 percent supermajority to pass a school levy. To lower that to 50 percent requires a constitutional amendment.
Scott Taffera sensed something was wrong when a man walked into the Ballard bank branch he manages wearing garden gloves, a hat and sunglasses.So there you have it. If you can maintain your sang froid, most likely, the robber's own nerves will take care of the rest.
But instead of following the nonconfrontational strategy used by most banks with suspicious people, Taffera approached the man with a hearty greeting and an offer to help. He invited him to remove his hat and sunglasses, and guided him to an equally bubbly teller.
In the end, the oddly dressed man requested a roll of quarters before slinking out the door....
By focusing attention in the guise of good customer service on all who enter a bank, [FBI Agent Larry] Carr says, bank employees can unnerve robbers, who generally try to remain as anonymous as possible when approaching a teller.
The ploy specifically targets so-called "note jobs," in which a robber passes a note demanding cash to a teller, Carr said. He estimates 90 percent of bank robberies in the Seattle area are note jobs.
In an 81-17 vote, the House signaled its desire to replace math and science on the WASL with end-of-course exams in algebra, geometry and biology, as long as an independent third party agrees those exams would be superior to the WASL.The one thing I like about end-of-course exams is that they fall at the end of a course, and can thus be directly tailored to the content, say, on the geometry or algebra curriculum--thus, "teaching to the test" just means teaching the class you should be teaching, not worrying about remediation and a generic curriculum.
Senate Bill 6023 also calls for a five-year delay in the year that students must pass the math WASL to graduate — from 2008 to 2013. Students who fail, however, still would have to take additional math courses to earn their diplomas. Passing the science WASL also would not become a graduation requirement until 2013.
Substitute Senate Bill 5336 creates a registry in the Office of the Secretary of State, letting same-sex couples who share a residence share in some medical and end-of-life rights enjoyed by married heterosexuals — including visitation rights in health-care facilities, rights to get health-care information and to obtain rights to cemetery plots and interment.Gay rights advocates are justifiably triumphant, while opposition groups are still beating the end-of-the-world drum.
The rights also would be open to unmarried heterosexual couples if one person is 62 or older.
“I think the Christian people are pretty much going to sleep and letting the culture collapse around them,” said Bob Higley, lobbyist for the Positive Christian Agenda. “I think the pastors are letting the churches ignore the political environment. They are not speaking up on social issues like they should.”That's exactly why the opposition is doomed to fail:allowing gay couples to share in important end-of-life decisions or to have more stable relationships won't cause civilization to collapse. Such claims just aren't credible.
... Morrison was fined $25,000 by the NBA on Tuesday for making an obscene gesture to a fan during a game in Miami....Sticks and stones, Mr. Morrison. Sticks and stones.
Morrison said he was being heckled throughout the game.
"I've got to learn to take it, I guess, but I think the guy went over the edge a little bit, calling me 'white trash' over and over again," said Morrison, who also sat out Tuesday's game against Miami. "I reacted naturally and I made a mistake. I hurt the organization and the team. I'm sorry about it and it will never happen again."
Nothing that follows is meant to substitute for the nuanced explanations of what’s usually called a writing handbook, the sort of book that college students purchase in a first-semester writing course. These five rules though have the virtue of being manageable, which is difficult to say of a 1,000-page book.I leave it to the reader to find a home for the two missing commas.
The results can be enlightening, surprising - and sometimes, a little disturbing. So Laird's advice also comes with a warning: "Don't google what you can't handle."No more fruitfully awkward moments, those train wreck date stories that you share with your friends and harbor in your nightmares for decades. Thanks, and no thanks, to Google.
Hers is the voice of experience. In her dating life, she regularly did online research on her dates and turned up, among other things, "bizarre" fetishes and a guy who was fascinated with vampires.
"Not my scene at all," Laird says, "and nothing I would've ever guessed over an initial meeting and beer."
Hear about the guy who spent 71 days in jail for stealing two hot dogs from a Wichita QuikTrip?Read the whole tragic tale.
Wait. He didn't steal the hot dogs, he just forgot to pay for them. Twelve people took two days off to serve jury duty last week, heard the evidence, and found the guy not guilty.
"It was stupid," said presiding juror Krysti Mason, 21.
This is no joke. The case of Thomas M. Wimberly, a 74-year-old veteran living on Social Security, highlights both inconsistencies in the law and the experiences of poor people in the criminal justice system.
Wimberly sat in jail unable to make bond, $100,000 at one point, charged with a crime that -- even if he'd been convicted -- brings no time behind bars, only probation.
The hot dogs cost $2.11, "with tax," assistant store manager Jeff Dalke testified.
A bill tied up in the state Legislature would clear up a law that leads to cases like Wimberly's and frustrates prosecutors.
Kansas law requires felony prosecution for crimes such as petty theft if the suspect has had two prior convictions.
When Wimberly walked out of the QuikTrip at Broadway and Murdock without paying for the hot dogs last July, he had two previous misdemeanor thefts on his record -- one more than a decade old.
Sample tests, which are available online at the OSPI Web site, focus on skills students can learn in class and not on talent — how well a student can draw or sing, for example. The sample tests show that teachers score on specific criteria, such as whether a student understands arts vocabulary, develops skills important for creating the art, and processes feedback from a partner or the audience.You'd never know that by the way districts are gutting the arts to provide extra WASL prep classes. Maybe making the arts part of the WASL is the only way to save them.
“It gives relevance to the arts,” Joseph said. “This is how you would be using it, the arts, in real life.”
Joseph said districts are eager to use the assessments.
“We can make sure that all kids are getting art like they’re supposed to,” she said, pointing out that the state and the federal government’s No Child Left Behind act consider the arts to be a core subject, just like math, reading or science.
My brother-in-law, my dad, and I spent a good part of the afternoon descending into madness. It started when snow canceled the Mariners doubleheader, forcing us to watch the Lakers take on the Suns. Steve Nash was running circles around LA defenders, Raja Bell was simultaneously holding Kobe to under 50 and knocking down threes, so in the end Phoenix won handily. George W. Bush is who the current president is.This might sit well in casual conversation, but represents sloppy writing. "George W. Bush is the current president" works just fine.
Before considering a solution, we must first understand exactly what the origin of the problem is.Ending with "is" often creates an awkward, deflated conclusion to a sentence--and an inflated word count. Compare:
Before considering a solution, we must first understand the exact origin of the problem.Better, with the punch landing on "problem," but still trim-worthy:
Before considering a solution, we must understand the origin of the problem.Bye-bye, "first." Bye-bye, "exact."
Since my wife doesn't get free internet in Úbeda, she's put me in charge of posting photos from Snapfish to her blog. The district cited a declining turnout, rising costs for helmets and shoulder pads and a robust Thurston County Youth Football League as reasons for dropping football.As an earlier Olympian article pointed out, principals see it as a major cost saver, while coaches lament the opportunity to establish a healthy high school program--especially when not all kids can join youth leagues.
The controversial decision impacts Washington, Jefferson, Marshall and Reeves middle schools.
“It’s an unfortunate decision,” said Barry McKinnon, longtime football coach at Capital High School. “But I’m not surprised.”
Jeff Carpenter, athletic director for the Olympia School District, said other than Washington Middle School, the three other middle schools had a hard time fielding a team.
A Pullman landlord notified police about a grow lamp in a closet, and police got a search warrant for a drug raid.Credible. Credible complaints. All credible complaints.
Eight officers with guns drawn surprised three roommates in the apartment last weekend and discovered they were growing tomatoes.
Commander Chris Tennant says it's the department's duty to investigate all credible complaints regarding marijuana growing operations in Pullman.
Von Hippel-Lindau disease, which afflicts many family members, can cause tumors in the eyes, ears, pancreas, kidney, brain and spine. Roughly three-fourths of the affected McCoys have pheochromocytomas — tumors of the adrenal gland.The wider implications, adding to a growing body of research linking particular ailments and abnormal behavior, are equally interesting. Perhaps there's some truth to the 19th century view of a "moral disease."
The bubbly-looking orange adrenal glands sit atop each kidney and make adrenaline and substances called catecholamines. Too much can cause high blood pressure, pounding headaches, heart palpitations, facial flushing, nausea and vomiting. There is no cure for the disease, but removing the tumors before they turn cancerous can improve survival.
Affected family members have long been known to be combative, even with their kin. Reynolds recalled her grandfather, "Smallwood" McCoy.
"When he would come to visit, everyone would run and hide. They acted like they were scared to death of him. He had a really bad temper," she said.
Her adopted daughter, another McCoy descendant, 11-year-old Winnter Reynolds, recently had an adrenal tumor removed at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital. Her teachers thought the girl had attention-deficit (hyperactivity) disorder. Now, Winnter says, "my parents are thinking it may be the tumor" that caused the behavior. "I've been feeling great since they took it out."
Marguerite, ma’am, when the hell am I supposed to have my lunch if we don’t have playground aides to cover? Is it really the best use of my time to be on potty duty or monitoring the lunchroom, or would you rather I be analyzing data and planning specific interventions for my kids? You know, the stuff that actually makes a difference towards student achievement?Ah, but Ryan, they're objective observers. As in, they have an objective.
For God’s sake, talk about squeezing a nickel until the buffalo poops. This can get ridiculous in a hurry: is there evidence that having school secretaries increases student learning? Is there evidence that having a principal increases student learning? Do they really need desks to learn, or can I sell those on Ebay? This is when it’s entirely obvious that someone from academia is talking, someone who doesn’t really understand what it’s like to teach.
If you enjoyed the bizarre blend of humor and horror in Shaun of the Dead, you'll probably like The Host, which is tough to find in theaters, but hopefully will be out on DVD within the year.
I'd write a full review, but since Scott Tobias already did the work, why bother?
Oh, and the score: simply fantastic. Get a taste in the clip above.
