I think I'm finished cranking out all the letters of recommendation I've been asked to provide. I think I'm finished commenting on all the freshfolk stories I've assigned. ("These days, I long for nostalgia" is the best line of the batch.) I think I'm finished videotaping myself for National Board certification, if that whole class discussion holds up to scrutiny. "I don't believe Dennis' decision is the result of any coercion. He is mature and understands the consequences of his decision," Meyer said during Wednesday's hearing. "I don't think Dennis is trying to commit suicide. This isn't something Dennis just came upon, and he believes with the transfusion he would be unclean and unworthy."The Times writeup goes over some of the ethical implications:
Ethics experts and Jehovah's Witness officials said such a court case is unusual these days.Wondering if the ruling would be part of the public record, I called the court's clerk this afternoon. "I'm sorry, but the records are sealed," she told me. "We can't discuss the case, even over the phone." The legal world is strange: the judge determined that, at 14, Lindberg was adult enough to make the ultimate decision, and yet the law still treats him as a minor, keeping the details of his case from full public scrutiny.
Most cases involving transfusions stem from surgical cases, and current policy at Children's is to inform parents that while the hospital will do everything it can to avoid transfusions, it will not let a child die for want of blood, said Dr. Doug Diekema, an ethics consultant there.
Years ago, courts routinely supported transfusions of children against the wishes of parents, Diekema said. While adults have the right to refuse any medical treatment, the courts ruled, that right doesn't extend to their children.
"The principle there is that parents can make martyrs of themselves, but they can't make martyrs of their children," Diekema said.
With an adolescent, the situation is much more complex, he said. "We all know that 14-year-olds change their minds; they become adults, and they have completely different belief systems. And that makes you nervous."
Nordstrom's store at Bellevue Square recently did away with its pianist, and the Alderwood mall store in Lynnwood will soon follow suit, said company spokeswoman Brooke White....can the death of live music be far behind?
Apparently, some shoppers prefer popular tunes by the likes of Bob Dylan, Alicia Keys and Frank Sinatra to the jazz and Broadway standards that pianists have been performing in Nordstrom stores for 20 years.
WHY do people — gay or straight — need the state’s permission to marry? For most of Western history, they didn’t, because marriage was a private contract between two families. The parents’ agreement to the match, not the approval of church or state, was what confirmed its validity.The entire essay is a fascinating rundown of the social and political forces that conspired to turn marriage from a publicly recognized private contract to a state-sanctioned joint benefit agreement. All this is to argue:
For 16 centuries, Christianity also defined the validity of a marriage on the basis of a couple’s wishes. If two people claimed they had exchanged marital vows — even out alone by the haystack — the Catholic Church accepted that they were validly married.
In 1215, the church decreed that a “licit” marriage must take place in church. But people who married illicitly had the same rights and obligations as a couple married in church: their children were legitimate; the wife had the same inheritance rights; the couple was subject to the same prohibitions against divorce.
Not until the 16th century did European states begin to require that marriages be performed under legal auspices.
Possession of a marriage license is no longer the chief determinant of which obligations a couple must keep, either to their children or to each other. But it still determines which obligations a couple can keep — who gets hospital visitation rights, family leave, health care and survivor’s benefits. This may serve the purpose of some moralists. But it doesn’t serve the public interest of helping individuals meet their care-giving commitments.It's a point others have raised before. Gay marriage allows benefits to gay couples without cost to heterosexuals. It simply doesn't undermine traditional marriage, since traditional marriage is nothing like it used to be--and it's always been that way. Or, to borrow a phrase from one of the U.S.'s most astute cultural critics: "Modern marriage. It's been like that all down through the ages."
Two Thanksgiving meals with family. Two or three solid pounds of leftovers. So none of it goes bad, I'm eating as much as I can, every meal, every day this week.Lightning chased the players off the field during the pregame warmups, and the teams were given only nine minutes for additional warmups before the game started at 8:55 p.m., 25 minutes later than scheduled.Reminds me of a now-infamous home game at Elma High School's old Davis Field, back before it was "improved." I was a senior in the marching band, first trumpet.
After five high school and college games were played at Heinz Field last weekend, crews hurriedly put down a new layer of sod atop the chewed-up turf for Monday night's game.
"It was like being on the beach in the sand on every play," said Miami linebacker Joey Porter, the former Steelers star playing against his old team for the first time.
The delayed start meant no national anthem or player introductions. The rain washed away nearly all the yard lines on a new grass field that had been in place less than 24 hours, and Heinz Field crews hurriedly put down new lines at halftime.
"It was nasty," Miami linebacker Channing Crowder said....
Late in the third quarter, Brandon Fields' punt from near the Miami goal line came straight down and plugged in the drenched turf like an arrow, burying itself several inches deep.
A coalition known as the Network for Excellence in Washington Schools sued the state in January, claiming that the state "has not upheld its constitutional obligation to fully fund public education for all children."This is the Board's first major action since the hotly contested election, and, hopefully, shows a glimpse of things to come: a focus on collaboration when tackling the upcoming budget crunch--and whatever else is headed our way.
Monday's Olympia School Board vote means the Olympia district will spend $5,000 to join that lawsuit, and the Olympia Education Association — the local teachers' union — also will contribute $5,000.
"This is a potentially defining moment for education in the state of Washington," said OEA president David Johnston, who encouraged the school board to vote to join the lawsuit. "There is a fundamental crisis in education support."
A decade later, the Hittites to the north attacked the weakened area around Simyra. "The Hittites were able to steal booty, including animals, and brought the animals home," along with the tularemia the livestock harboured, Trevisanato explains. Not too long after, the Hittites themselves apparently began to suffer from an epidemic of tularemia.Bad pun, choice weapon of science writers:
History seems to have repeated itself a few years afterwards when another ancient people, the Arzawans from western Anatolia, saw the weakened Hittites to their east and decided to strike. "They thought, if we attack now, we can push the border back to where we want," Trevisanato says.
But strangely, during this period of warfare between 1320 and 1318 BC, records indicate that rams mysteriously began appearing on roads in Arzawans.
The Arzawans took the sheep to their villages and used them for livestock breeding. Soon after, though, they began to suspect a link between the appearance of the animals and the terrible disease ravaging their communities.
"They started wondering 'Why do these rams start showing up on the road?'" says Trevisanato. He believes that among the Hittites, "somebody must have had the bright idea" to send diseased rams over to their Arzawan enemies.
Ultimately, the Arzawans were so weakened that their attempt to conquer the Hittites failed.
Still, in order to consider the rams as a true biological weapon, evidence is needed to clearly prove that the Hittites understood the full ramifications of these animals towards their enemies, says Mark Wheelis, at the University of California, Davis.The theory has a surfeit of charm to make up for its moderate level of plausibility. Still, it doesn't take the germ theory of disease to connect "sick ram makes us sick" to "sick ram will wipe out our enemies."
The LORD's hand was heavy upon the people of Ashdod and its vicinity; he brought devastation upon them and afflicted them with tumors. [a] 7 When the men of Ashdod saw what was happening, they said, "The ark of the god of Israel must not stay here with us, because his hand is heavy upon us and upon Dagon our god." 8 So they called together all the rulers of the Philistines and asked them, "What shall we do with the ark of the god of Israel?"Footnote [b] helpfully adds, "Or with tumors in the groin (see Septuagint)."
They answered, "Have the ark of the god of Israel moved to Gath." So they moved the ark of the God of Israel.
9 But after they had moved it, the LORD's hand was against that city, throwing it into a great panic. He afflicted the people of the city, both young and old, with an outbreak of tumors. [b]
If we take 84 percent — the passing rate — of the 72 percent of the students included in Bergeson's count, this means that only about 60 percent of the original members of the class of 2008 have passed the WASL.If we aren't helping more students graduate, then WASL reform is no reform at all.
When you have 40 percent of your kids failing, it's hard to see why Bergeson is claiming victory. Forty percent of our kids failing is very bad news indeed.
Bergeson's tactic of ignoring the entire class of 2008 — and focusing only on the 70 percent or so who made it to the 12th grade on time — unfortunately is typical of too many chief state school officers. Massachusetts claims a 95 percent passing rate on its graduation tests, even though 30 percent of its kids drop out. Texas has claimed 85 percent passing, even though its most recent school attrition rate is 34 percent.
Standards-and-testing — the Essential Academic Learning Requirements/WASL system — was supposed to deliver "world-class schooling" for all kids. That was the original promise. Then Bergeson amended it to only 80 percent of the kids. Now she's claiming victory even though only about 60 percent of the kids are likely to pass the WASL and graduate on time.
Is this really a great achievement after 14 years and who knows how many hundreds of millions of dollars spent on testing? And, are our schools not pretty much where we were in 1992 before we started with this unproven yet very expensive obsession with standards and high-stakes testing?
Virtue ethics, also referred to as Aretaic theory, offers a viable alternative to deterrence and retributivism that better accounts for both the practical and aspirational purposes of punishment. The essence of virtue ethics is that the moral value of an action depends neither on its conformity to categorical moral rules, as in deontological theory, nor on the overall happiness that the action causes, as in consequentialist theory. Rather, the morality of an action depends on both the action’s character and on the moral agent’s disposition while performing the action. The central purpose of virtue ethics is to answer the question, “How should I live?” instead of the question, “What is the right action?” Virtue ethics’ answer is that a person should live in a way that cultivates the virtues necessary for human flourishing. A moral agent exercises virtue through practical reasoning; knowing the proper action depends on wisdom, deliberation, and moral judgment. In other words, a virtuous agent acts not just rightly, but for the right reasons....You might argue, on the Aff, that PBET, by turning justice into a song-and-dance between prosecutors and defendants, and by eliminating the judge's role, devalues the educative role of the justice system. Likewise, from the Neg, you might argue that PBET shows that the criminal is willing to help society as a start to the rehabilitative process.
If criminal law’s function in society is to promote virtue, then punishment is justified only if it facilitates the development of practical reason: the tendency and motivation to do the right act because one values the proper reasons for acting rightly. When a criminal makes an unvirtuous choice, punishment plays an educative role. Punishment does not act, however, as a deterrent—a person should choose the right action out of a desire to do so, not out of fear of sanction. A criminal offense constitutes a failure of practical reason: the perpetrator acted through the wrong means or for the wrong ends. However, virtuous punishment habituates the offender to form a desire to act rightly for the right reasons.
Therefore, practical reason should guide the state in deciding what punishment to impose. Imposing either excessive or overly merciful punishment would not be virtuous if it inhibits rather than promotes the development of practical reason in the offender. The state should also impose punishment only for the right reasons—the cultivation of virtue and the promotion of human flourishing. The correctness of the punishment depends on the practical wisdom present in the justice system as a whole. Individual judges exercise practical wisdom when they determine fault and punishment. Likewise, the policies of the state should be evaluated based on the extent to which they reflect practical wisdom and instill virtue.
Copyright isn't the issue for the Romantics. The band's attorneys said Activision properly secured permission to use the song What I Like About You, which allowed it to record a cover version. But by creating an imitation so much like the Romantics' original, they said, the company has infringed the group's right to its own image and likeness.The lawsuit threatens sales of Guitar Hero, itself a meta-cover experience.
Guitar Hero representatives did not return calls for comment.
Artists such as Tom Waits and Bette Midler have won legal victories on similar grounds for sound-alike recordings used in TV commercials. In those cases, the imitation recordings were ruled to have infringed the artists' rights to publicity by leading consumers to associate the artist with the advertised product.
What I Like About You was recorded for the game by the San Francisco music firm Wavegroup Sound, also named in the suit.
"It's a very good imitation, and that's our objection," said Troy attorney William Horton. "Even the guys in the band said, 'Wow, that's not us, but it sure sounds like us.'"
Between 1659 and 1681, Christmas celebrations were outlawed in the colony, and the law declared that anyone caught "observing, by abstinence from labor, feasting or any other way any such days as Christmas day, shall pay for every such offense five shillings." Finding no biblical authority for celebrating Jesus' birth on Dec. 25, the theocrats who ran Massachusetts regarded the holiday as a mere human invention, a remnant of a heathen past. They also disapproved of the rowdy celebrations that went along with it. "How few there are comparatively that spend those holidays … after an holy manner," the Rev. Increase Mather lamented in 1687. "But they are consumed in Compotations, in Interludes, in playing at Cards, in Revellings, in excess of Wine, in Mad Mirth."Yet pockets of resistance would still spring up across the countryside for centuries to come, and the War on Christmas would dwarf the Hundred Years' War, the War for Independence, and the War With Grandpa both in scope and significance.
After the English Restoration government reclaimed control of Massachusetts from the Puritans in the 1680s, one of the first acts of the newly appointed royal governor of the colony was to sponsor and attend Christmas religious services. Perhaps fearing a militant Puritan backlash, for the 1686 services he was flanked by redcoats. The Puritan disdain for the holiday endured: As late as 1869, public-school kids in Boston could be expelled for skipping class on Christmas Day.
For one of my National Board entries, I have to videotape myself today, as I rove through class monitoring small group discussions.I am voting for the U.S. presidential candidate whom I believe will lead us out of the financial mess we are in....but you have to respect a letter writer named "Frank D. Bates." Here's to more of 'em.
He is former governor of the great state of Massachusetts, CEO of a very successful finance company and has started his own finance company. His net worth is $200 million to $250 million, which means he is a very intelligent and savvy businessman.
I think we need that type of person to run this country as president.
I am voting for Mitt Romney, who I think is the right man at the right time and I hope we can get him in the president’s office.
About 350 people marched through downtown Olympia this afternoon to protest the war in Iraq and show support for demonstrators who for 11 days protested and tried to prevent shipments of military equipment from the Port of Olympia.Also: photos from Friday's march. Look closely for MT McLaughlin, who lurks in a couple shots. [via Anne Fischel]
I wanted to post a few photos from the Olympian that depict what I feel to be overly aggressive actions by the police. I don't want to start a huge argument, I want this to be a conversation about alternative responses the police could use. I realize that we can't get the whole story from just the photos, but let's just try not to turn this into a speculation-fest.Having heard and read multiple accounts, and having seen multiple videos and photos, I'd use "overly aggressive" to describe the OPD's tactics, too.
At 2 a.m. on July 21, Hahn was found on her back at the front door of her family's house in the 1700 block of Liberty Street. Paramedics were called, and she was taken to Rush-Copley Medical Center in Aurora, where she never recovered....What a tragic combination of religiosity, depression, manipulation, ardor, and naiveté.
Hahn's official cause of death was pneumonia that had invaded the lungs in her malnourished 5-foot-5, 115-pound body.
After a long discussion, the coroner's jury ruled Hahn's death an accident.
But after Hahn died, a minister from Rush-Copley called the coroner's office. According to Gilbert, the hospital minister said the family was telling him information he thought might be relevant to the death investigation.
The hospital minister said about two years ago an Aurora pastor told Hahn that a prophecy declared she would marry his son but that she had to fast for two weeks, Gilbert testified. At the end of that two weeks, the pastor said marriage was not in the prophecy after all, Gilberts testified.
In 2006, Hahn left her alma mater and began worshiping at the International House of Prayer, a Kansas City, Mo., church she found online, according to her mother. The organization is known for a 24-hour prayer room, where hundreds sing, fast and study the Bible.
According to Gilbert, the family lost contact with Hahn during that time. Hahn told friends she often slept during the day so she could pray through the night.
At some point while she was in Kansas City, the Aurora pastor contacted Hahn again, Gilbert said. Again, the pastor -- who was not named at the inquest -- told Hahn a prophecy said she would marry his son, but she had to fast for two weeks.
During that fast, in which Hahn ingested only water, her family somehow became aware Hahn's health was failing, Gilbert said. Hahn's mother went to Kansas City and brought her back to Aurora. Hahn died a few days later.
Today I videotaped myself as part of a practice run for the National Board certification process. I'll begin official recording next week, for my small-group component. 
Since Josh is practically begging me to tell the tale, I suppose I shall describe what, in my dream life, passes for a slightly unusual occurrence. (In your dream life, it'd probably be worth a trip to a therapist.)"My value is justice, which is deeper than the law, and presupposes the law. My criterion is attaining a legitimate result."Please: never describe self-contradiction as "debater hypocrisy."
"What does 'legitimate' mean?"
"In accordance with law."
Last time, it was disappointment with robots. The racial gap in federal sentences cannot entirely be explained by the 1-to-100 crack/powder ratio and other legally relevant variables... [P]rosecutors seek "substantial assistance" departures for blacks and Latinos less a often than for whites, and this disparity persists when researchers do their best to control for legally relevant variables. The disparity in substantial assistance departures may reflect the lesser ability of blacks and Latinos to provide information useful to prosecutors, the greater reluctance of blacks and Latinos to provide this information (because of their greater loyalty to co-offenders or their greater fear of reprisals), or the prosecutors' racial favoritism. When minority defendants do receive substantial assistance departures, the departures they receive are smaller than those received by whites....Furthermore, more generally, pleas vary across federal districts.
A gender gap in federal sentences preceded the Guidelines. The time served by men in federal prisons before the Guidelines exceeded that served by women by about nine months or 50%. In the years since the Guidelines were implemented, the gender gap has grown. The time served by men increased 96% after the Guidelines while that served by women increased 75%. Men now serve 51 months on average and women 28.87 The previous nine-month gender gap has grown to 23 months.
Unlike the growing racial gap in federal sentences, the increasing gender gap cannot be largely explained by statutory innovations like the crack/powder disparity or other legally relevant variables. The Sentencing Commission reported that, after controlling for relevant variables, men were twice as likely to be imprisoned for drug crimes as women. Prison sentences in drug cases and other cases were twenty-five to thirty percent longer for men. Women received more substantial downward departures.
When a prosecutor seeks a substantial assistance departure, the bottom is the limit. No statute or guideline constrains the extent of the defendant's reward. Departures for substantial assistance occur in about 17% of all cases and other departures in about 18% more. Substantial assistance departures, however, are larger and account for twice as much variation in federal sentences (4.4% of all variation versus 2.2%).The frequency of substantial assistance departures varies greatly from one district to the next. Jeffery T. Ulmer concurs. In "The Localized Uses of Federal Sentencing Guidelines in Four U.S. District Courts: Evidence of Processual Order," found in Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 28, Issue 2, 2005, he writes,
The size of substantial assistance departures varied between districts (as both the qualitative and quantitative data showed), and more interestingly, the definition of “substantial assistance to law enforcement” varied markedly between districts. Northland and Northeast Districts had relatively broad and liberal definitions of what constituted substantial assistance, and in both districts, the substantial assistance provision of the guidelines was used to both generate useful information for future prosecutions and ameliorate guideline sentences seen as too harsh. On the other hand, Western District had a much more restrictive definition of substantial assistance.Are these differences unjust? That's for an Aff to argue--and for a Neg to rebut.
Our apartment complex has its resident resident-with-a-complex: a girl about 12 years old who talks to herself continually. Not to herself, really, but to someone else. Like she's conversing with an invisible friend, long past the age when such conversations are considered sane.[And] before anyone tries to tell me I don't get it, don't even start. I own my own home. My wife is self-employed, and we get absolutely reamed every April. I've got a special needs daughter who's eating up a lot of my discretionary income.I'm a little less pessimistic. I blame...
But I still believe that every vote should count 1-to-1. When your no vote is worth 50% more than my yes vote, that's giving you more power in a democracy than I have, and that's unfair. The people of Washington had a chance to fix that. Apparently, they prefer minority rules.
This can't be seen as anything other than a total repudiation of Washington students and teachers.
1. The state has the duty to achieve a specified object.The primary goal of the utilitarian view, Moore argues, is deterrence. For this reason,
2. Laws are the instruments by which the state is to reach its object.
3. Infractions of the law frustrate the achievement of the object.
4. The state has the right to punish infractions of the law so far as this is necessary to achieve its object and within the limits established by the nature of its object.
A penal system that hopes to deter crime cannot tolerate exceptions. Punishment deters crime not only in criminals themselves, by reforming or disabling them, but in others as well, by setting an example. The first sort of deterrence, specific deterrence, is important. But, because it affects the actions of so many more people, the second sort of deterrence is proportionally more important.Now we're at an interesting juncture. Does a plea bargain in exchange for testimony conflict with the second kind of deterrence? If so, under utilitarianism, we vote Aff.
In today's non-news, library patrons have to wait a long time for "hot new titles." Meanwhile, in the photo at right, Seattle Public Library employee Rick Battin operates the Automated Materials Handling System that sorts returned and reserved materials at the Central Library in downtown Seattle.1. Why is a human doing a job a robot could do better?
This launch is your launch. While a traditional publication might begin with pre-determined content, Scoop08 begins with a request: Get involved. Click "continue reading" to learn how — or jump right to it: Sign up to cover a personality, policy, big idea or geographical region on the left; Submit your opinion or story ideas on the right.Our man Josh is one of the original crew, doing what he does best. (I don't know. Ask him.)
Having grown up watching their dad coach at Capital, Amanda and Brianne have had plenty of exposure to running. Wright, who was a distance runner in high school and qualified for nationals twice in college, had hopes that his daughters might share his love for the sport.Worked pretty well this year, eh, Kevin?
Judge Michael Heavey wrote in an opinion attached to his order granting summary judgment that uneven distribution of state money to school districts violates the state constitution because it is not general and uniform, and violates the equal-protection rights of Federal Way teachers, students and taxpayers.This is a tentative but satisfying victory for
The judge said he expects the case to be appealed to the Washington Supreme Court. The state has 30 days to file an appeal. A call to the state attorney general's office seeking comment was not immediately returned.
The school district's lawsuit was filed in November 2006 against the state, the governor, the superintendent of public instruction and other officials.
Heavey, a former state legislator, said he believes lawmakers had been making progress toward a more equitable distribution of school money, but there is still some work to do. For example, most school districts get $32,746 from the state per teacher, although a few get as much as $4,000 more.
The state distributes school money based on the number of students in each district. Under a formula, the money is split among teachers, administrators and other staff, with employees paid within a range for each category.
"Because of the 'ranges,' there are 258 different funding levels for the state's 296 school districts," Heavey wrote.
He called the formula "arbitrary and wholly irrelevant" and said it was left over from an old system.
A statewide program offered at South Puget Sound Community College that allows high school students to take college classes for free has grown 15-fold since the college piloted the program in the early 1990s.The legislature will likely take up the funding issue this coming spring.
But it turns out the program's popularity has created a $34.5 million budget shortfall at Washington's community and technical colleges. At SPSCC, the gap is about $1.5 million....
"It puts more of a squeeze on us to figure out how we're going to pay for things that cost us more," said Nancy McKinney, the college's vice president for administrative services.
Data provided by the United States Sentencing Commission reveal that approximately 20 percent of all offenders sentenced nationwide receive departures for substantial assistance; for fiscal year 2002, the departure rate was 17.4 percent (United States Sentencing Commission, 2004, p. 51). However, the districts vary widely in the percentage of cases receiving substantial assistance departures, from a high of 46.3 percent in the Middle District of Alabama to a low of 5.2 percent in the District of Rhode Island (United States Sentencing Commission, 2004: table 26). There also is considerable variation in the departure rates for different types of offenses: 27.4 percent of the offenders convicted of drug trafficking received a substantial assistance departure, compared to only 17.8 percent of the offenders convicted of fraud, 14.9 percent of the offenders convicted of robbery, and 12.2 percent of the offenders convicted of firearms offenses (United States Sentencing Commission, 2004: table 27). The mean percentage discount in the sentence as a result of a departure for substantial assistance also varied for these types of offenses. The mean discount was 46.7 percent for drug trafficking, 99.8 percent for fraud, 35.1 percent for robbery, and 48.9 percent for firearms offenses; the discount for all offenses was 50 percent (United States Sentencing Commission, 2004: table 30).There's much more in the article, which I'll analyze in due time. Suffice it to say that some hard-to-find statistics are now readily available to the interested LDer.
The fact that substantial assistance departures are common, coupled with the fact that offenders receive a significant sentence discount as a result of this type of departure, suggests that critics' concerns about the reappearance of disparity and discrimination under the federal sentencing guidelines are not unfounded. These highly discretionary and largely unreviewable decisions (Maxfield & Kramer, 1998), which shift the locus of decision-making from the judge to the prosecutor, may reflect the influence of legally irrelevant factors such as the offender's race/ethnicity, sex, or socioeconomic status. As Secunda (1997, p. 1269) notes, "the unsurprising effect of the accumulation of unguided discretion [in departures for substantial assistance] may be the defeat of the principal purpose of the Guidelines: increased fairness and uniform sentencing for similarly situated offenders."
JIM ANDERSONLaurie Creighton, a fitness teacher and volleyball coach at Olympia High, was recognized today with a “Teacher of the Year” award by the Connecticut-based Teachers’ Insurance Plan.A sample comment from a former student:
I had Mrs. Creighton my sophomore year about 3 years ago. She was great, really friendly and is an excellent teacher. I still catch up with her once in a while whenever we bump into each other. Well deserved.The award brings recognition for 30 years of service--and a nice $1,000 bonus. Bravo, Ms. Creighton!
Many experiments have shown it: simple molecules can combine chemically—outside of living things—to form the building blocks of DNA, the key component of life. But just how this combination occurs is unknown. Scientists want to find out, since that might explain how DNA originated.The answers are tentative and raise further questions--but that's science.
Now, chemists have proposed what they call the first detailed, feasible account of how one of DNA’s major building blocks could have arisen on an early, lifeless Earth. The necessary ingredients: five cyanide molecules, they said.
Matt Valloni donated this offense against reason. Nauseated by its unbelievable disregard for all aesthetic rules, I almost couldn't bring myself to wear it.Wikipedia has been vilified as a petri dish for misinformation, and the variable accuracy of its articles is a point Groom readily concedes. Since the advent of the Web, she said, the quality of sources students cite has deteriorated.If you want your students to experience the Wiki Way, but aren't sure they're ready for the rough-and-tumble world of Wikipedia, then, instead of having them take notes on a book, introduce a tool like pbwiki so they can create their own "SparkNotes." Just make sure you have adequate technology, clear expectations, and more than a little tech savvy.
For her students, the Wikipedia experiment was "transformative," and students' writing online proved better than the average undergrad research paper.
Knowing their work was headed for the Web, not just one harried professor's eyes, helped students reach higher - as did the standards set by the volunteer "Wikipedians" who police entries for accuracy and neutral tone, Groom said.
