Return of the King: The Sacrifice of Faramir - Billy Boyd - The Edge of ...

It isn't so easy to tell the good guys from the bad in real life.  Or maybe it is, after all. 

Progressive Education

When I was in grad school, I proofread a fellow candidate's thesis proposal, and in two pages, I found 64 grammar and spelling errors.  She was the product of a progressive high school and college whose goals included giving people a chance to progress even if "educationally challenged". That was the late 1970's.

Now we have a program in New York in which failing students can get full credit without attending class.They would instead watch video lessons and take tests online.  This program was exposed by the Times on the 9th in a scathing article.  Administrators for the program were not happy, and encouraged students to write in defending the program.  The results are between sad and laughable.  This is one of the many reasons our country has fallen so low in the world's standings for literacy.  The less we demand of our students, the less we reward them, the less we get from them.  How surprising.  Progressive education is not...progressive.... at all. 

Politicians...Scum of the Earth

 

I am inordinately fed up with politicians. Lawyers pretty much disgust me, but when they go into politics, they hit a new low.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Stay in Line, or you are Finished! Orwellian Activities in Science.

A scientific journal was created with open access to the public.  It looked at patterns, and tried to interpret them.  Published by Copernicus Publications, it began well, but before the year was out, it had committed the ultimate crime.  It had published an article showing patterns that lead to an offering of the opinion that perhaps man made global warming was not verified. 
The announcement of its demise is quoted in it's entirety below.

Termination of the journal Pattern Recognition in Physics

Copernicus Publications started publishing the journal Pattern Recognition in Physics (PRP) in March 2013. The journal idea was brought to Copernicus' attention and was taken rather critically in the beginning, since the designated Editors-in-Chief were mentioned in the context of the debates of climate skeptics. However, the initiators asserted that the aim of the journal was to publish articles about patterns recognized in the full spectrum of physical disciplines rather than to focus on climate-research-related topics.

Recently, a special issue was compiled entitled "Pattern in solar variability, their planetary origin and terrestrial impacts". Besides papers dealing with the observed patterns in the heliosphere, the special issue editors ultimately submitted their conclusions in which they “doubt the continued, even accelerated, warming as claimed by the IPCC project” (Pattern Recogn. Phys., 1, 205–206, 2013).

Copernicus Publications published the work and other special issue papers to provide the spectrum of the related papers to the scientists for their individual judgment. Following best practice in scholarly publishing, published articles cannot be removed afterwards.

In addition, the editors selected the referees on a nepotistic basis, which we regard as malpractice in scientific publishing and not in accordance with our  publication ethics we expect to be followed by the editors.
Therefore, we at Copernicus Publications wish to distance ourselves from the apparent misuse of the originally agreed aims & scope of the journal as well as the malpractice regarding the review process, and decided on 17 January 2014 to cease the publication of PRP. Of course, scientific dispute is controversial and should allow contradictory opinions which can then be discussed within the scientific community. However, the recent developments including the expressed implications (see above) have led us to this drastic decision.

Interested scientists can reach the online library at: www.pattern-recogn-phys.net

Martin Rasmussen
January 2014


The italics and underlining are mine. 

9/11

A Miscellany

These are highlights from micelles mirror.com, one of my favorite political blogs. Please go there to see all the things she says, so we don't have to say them!

 

All that data Uncle Sam is gathering on you needs a home, so here is the new 1.2 BILLION dollar NSA storage facility being built in Utah. 15 times the size of an NFL stadium. Feel safer now? I hear parchment shredding....there isn't much left of the constitution.

Pretty damn stupid, I would say.

Hard to really live on just part time work.... Thanks Obamacare. But that explains the next pic, doesn't it?

And Michelle tells us Obama wants to make all Americans free from government dependency! I think she meant to say he wants all Americans government dependent, eh? That is only one part too, actually, one third of Americans are on some form of Big Bro's help wagon. While many of those are legitimate cases, I think most are not. One third isn't a safety net, it is a trap.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Just Three of the Many

These three people were all brutally attacked and killed by young black men.  They are just three of the many who remain ignored by the media and ther politicians. 

WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE HERE?