Tuesday, August 24, 2010

CA, of all places, builds $578M school - personally I would have drawn the line at the talking benches

Money quote (literally):
"New buildings are nice, but when they're run by the same people who've given us a 50 percent dropout rate, they're a big waste of taxpayer money," said Ben Austin, executive director of Parent Revolution who sits on the California Board of Education.

LA unveils $578M school, costliest in the nation

At RFK, the features include fine art murals and a marble memorial depicting the complex's namesake, a manicured public park, a state-of-the-art swimming pool and preservation of pieces of the original hotel.
The pricey schools have come during a sensitive period for the nation's second-largest school system: Nearly 3,000 teachers have been laid off over the past two years, the academic year and programs have been slashed. The district also faces a $640 million shortfall and some schools persistently rank among the nation's lowest performing.
Shhhhh, talking about over-spending, cash-strapped, union-run schools wasting even more taxpayer money is a "sensitive" issue!
The extravagance has led some to wonder where the line should be drawn and whether more money should be spent on teachers.
 Yeah, maybe it would have been better if they had focused on improving education for children.
donations should have been sought to fund the RFK project's talking benches commemorating the site's history
I think I would have drawn the line at the talking benches ...
skyrocketing material and land prices, rigorous seismic codes and unionized labor.
WHAT? Regulations and unions have driven up costs?!  NO WAY!

Read more at news.yahoo.com

Monday, August 02, 2010

It's not plagiarism, it's "trying on a persona"

Originality and uniqueness are on the wane?!?!?! I WEEP for the future! My generation is so shallow and superficial, no wonder they loved Obama! Just a generation of followers who are lazy and don't care about doing anything right - or perhaps anything at all.

Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com
“Our notion of authorship and originality was born, it flourished, and it may be waning,” Ms. Blum said.
She contends that undergraduates are less interested in cultivating a unique and authentic identity — as their 1960s counterparts were — than in trying on many different personas, which the Web enables with social networking.


“If you are not so worried about presenting yourself as absolutely unique, then it’s O.K. if you say other people’s words, it’s O.K. if you say things you don’t believe, it’s O.K. if you write papers you couldn’t care less about because they accomplish the task, which is turning something in and getting a grade,” Ms. Blum said, voicing student attitudes. “And it’s O.K. if you put words out there without getting any credit.”

Read more at www.nytimes.com
 

"Adult stem cell research far ahead of embryonic!"

Told ya so! Adult stem cells are actually successful while embryonic is all "hope" and "change" and no substance. What is it about people fixating on promoting scientific research that kills a unique human life and has no evidence of curing anyone? Why has this been a cause celeb?

Is the culture of death that entrenched? Are they doing it just because it is unethical and want to push boundaries? That they want to debase human life to protect their "logic" for abortion, among other agendas?

Kudos to this article for actually talking about adult stem cells - most people don't realize there is such a thing, that they are actually successful in the real world, and think ALL stem cells are embryonic. They also think Bush made their research illegal when in fact he just banned federal funds (like those from people who are morally opposed to the practice) from paying for it.

Embryonic stem cells have thus far been a failure, cruelly inflating the hopes of people with truly tragic ailments and diseases while activists use their pain and hope to further their own agenda.

This issue has been on the back burner for a while (maybe because there have been no results to crow about) it's high time the truth is revealed.
Amplify’d from www.boston.com

Adult stem cell research far ahead of embryonic

example of many innovative therapies doctors are studying with adult stem cells. Those are stem cells typically taken from bone marrow and blood -- not embryos.
For all the emotional debate that began about a decade ago on allowing the use of embryonic stem cells, it's adult stem cells that are in human testing today.
"That's really one of the great success stories of stem cell biology that gives us all hope
"That gives adult stem cells really a very interesting and potent quality that embryonic stem cells don't have,"
Read more at www.boston.com

Cross-posted at Right Wing News