Category: Academia

Try The 4-H Club Instead: Wisconsin Board Refuses To Approve School-Sponsored Club for Gay Students

In Wisconsin, there is now record of the West Bend School Board ever rejecting an application for a student club at a high school . . . until now. You guessed it, students wanted to form the Gay-Straight Alliance clubs at East and West high schools but were denied approval by a 3-3 vote of the board. Board President Randy Marquardt opposed approval of the club.
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Texas Teacher Suspended For Allegedly Taunting Muslim Girl About Death of Her “Uncle” Osama Bin Laden

In another example of the depths of anti-Muslim sentiment in this country, a Texas high school teacher has been placed on administrative allegedly telling a 9th grade Muslim girl in his algebra class “I heard about your uncle’s death” and “I bet that you’re grieving” the death of Osama bin Laden.
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Fatty Spinach or Leafy Pork? Japanese Scientists Successfully Implant Spinach Genes Into Pig

Next time your spouse tells you to put down those pork rinds, you may soon be able to say “I’m just get my vegetables.” Scientists in Japan have successfully implanted Spinach in a pig for the first time to produce a healthier pig. While the industry may be able to drop the slogan “pork, the other white meat” for “pork, the other vegetable.”
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Good Grigory Perelman Not Hunting $1M Prize Because He Already “Control(s) the Universe”

Submitted by Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger

Perelman in 1993

Grigory  (“Grisha”)Perelman is an unusual man  — in very many respects. Living in near poverty with his mother in St. Petersburg, the forty-three year old Russian mathematician had a strange interest in an arcane problem known as the Poincare’ Conjecture. Proposed in 1904 by French mathematician, Henri Poincare’, the theorem contends that three-spheres are the only possible bounded three-dimensional spaces to contain no holes.

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Administration Shuts Down SETI Telescope Array For Lack of Funds — While Continuing Operations in Three Wars

While the Obama Administration has commenced a third war in Libya and is spending billions every week in military operations from Kabul to Tripoli, it is shutting down various domestic programs for lack of funds. The latest is the Allen Telescope Array — a large number of small satellite dishes that search for extraterrestrial life in Northern California. The prohibitive cost? $1.5 million dollars a year (an additional $1 million is used on data collection and analysis). In the meantime, the Administration is refusing to yield to the latest Afghan official insisting that the country does not want or need U.S. troops and yet another case of an Afghan soldier killing U.S. personnel — this time eight U.S. soldiers and one contractor killed by one of our allies.
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Law Student Takes Parents To Court To Force Them To Resume Paying His Allowance

Having just given my final torts exam last night, this story caught my eye. In Madrid, a 25-year-old Spanish man from Andalusia sued his parents after they stopped giving him allowance money and demanded the resumption of $588 a month.
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Princeton Professor Commits Suicide After Termination of Contract — Raising Questions Over His Treatment By University

There is a very sad story out of Princeton where Professor Antonio Calvo, 45, has committed suicide after the university refused to renew his contract — a decision that not only meant the loss of his directorship of the Spanish program but his having to leave the United States since the move terminated his visa. He had taught at Princeton for ten years.

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No Einstein: Tennessee Legislator Falsely Quotes Einstein As Embracing Christianity As Thinking Man’s Religion

Frank Niceley (R-Strawberry Plains, TN) is one of the politicians leading the effort to introduce creationism back into schools to rival the teaching of evolution. He may, however, need a bit more time in the classroom on his intellectual sources. As noted on sites like Think Progress, Niceley has confused Albert Einstein with Francis Bacon in his insistence that Einstein discredited atheism and said that a truly thinking man will turn to Christianity.

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McEducation: Kasich Orders Ohio Universities To Look Into Three-Year Degree Programs

Oscar Wilde once said that a cynic is “a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Ohio Gov. John Kasich would appear to be that cynic. He believes that he has found an easy way to dealing with high tuition costs in college — cut the college education itself. In a move that would be a disaster for the quality and standing of Ohio universities and colleges, Kasich wants schools to reduce college educations to three rather than four years to pump out more graduates in a shorter time.

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GW Student Commits Suicide in Dorm Room — Fox Pulls Article Linking Suicide To President’s Visit

One of our students yesterday was found dead in his room at the City Hall dormitory. The name of the male student has not been released. Fox News, however, caused a sensation by running an article tying the suicide to the arrival of President Obama on campus for his speech on debt reform. Fox later removed the article entitled GWU Suicide Tragically Coincides with Obama Speech from its website after objections from the school and public.

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A Response to Forbes: The Criticism of GWU as the Site of Obama’s Debt Speech Based on Fuzzy Forbes Facts

Forbes Magazine today condemned President Barack Obama for his choice of a location for his speech on national debt: George Washington University. Staff writer David Whelan objects that the school is the most expensive college in the nation but Forbes ranks it only as the 291st best college. While I agree that tuition at this school and other schools is too high, the ranking by Forbes is absurd and is not followed, as far as I can tell, by anyone other than Forbes staff writers.

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Illinois Teacher Loses Job After Ordering Elementary School Students To Take Off Their Underpants For Inspection

In Collinsville, Illinois, a special education teacher has been sent packing by the school board after he allegedly ordered children at Webster Elementary School to remove their underpants to see who had soiled their pants.
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University of North Carolina Student Admits Anti-Gay Attack Was A Hoax

The University of North Carolina community has been traumatized by a report that a gay student, Quinn Matney, was attacked and burned in an anti-gay incident. The college freshman says that a man called him an anti-homosexual term and burned his hand with a piece of hot metal while he was standing on the bridge.
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The Perils of Pedagogy: Student Yawns So Widely In Class That She Has To Be Rushed To Hospital

Teachers cannot always guarantee to keep the students on the edge of their seats. An occasional yawn is an occupational hazard. However, one teacher at Northampton School for Girls in England has the dubious distinction of causing a yawn so great that it sent a girl to the hospital.
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Chicago School Bans Homemade Lunches To Protect Students From Unhealthy Food Choices

In an extraordinary rejection of parental decision-making over their children’s diets, the administration at Little Village Academy on Chicago’s West Side has banned homemade lunches to protect students from the unhealthy diet choices of their parents.

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