WASHINGTON, May 10, 2013 ? Adult basic education and GED programs, with about 800,000 students taking GED tests each year, serve a segment of society that escaped government schools, including many homeschoolers. But the national propaganda effort called the Common Core Curriculum is spreading its tentacles to them.
While many may not take the GED seriously, calling it the “Good Enough Diploma,” consider that quite a few homeschoolers take GED tests as a way to cancel out high school attendance requirements and lessen the record-keeping burden on home educators caused by compulsory attendance laws in every state.
Thus, aligning GED with Common Core has the potential of erasing all the efforts and sacrifices the homeschooling parents have put in to protect their children from the centralized indoctrination.
…Below is an excerpt from a larger Social Studies Extended Response, found on page 52 from Writing Across the Tests: Responding to Text on the Language Arts, Social Studies, and Science Test, entitled, “Does Foreign Aid Really Help?”
Those who support sending aid to poor countries do so because poor countries often have high levels of poverty, poor educational systems, an ineffective police and judicial force, and limited public services such as healthcare, transportation networks, and banking systems. They believe that when living conditions are this poor, crime levels tend to be higher. Poorer countries, because they have weak governments, often have areas that attract terrorist groups because no one is there to stop them from pursuing those types of activities. Thus, poor countries are often home to terrorist groups that are free to plan and carry out attacks on the rich, industrialized nations, without fear of being stopped. This is in fact [bold words are mine] what happened on 9/11 when terrorists from Afghanistan hijacked planes and carried out attacks on the United States. In this case, the terrorists originated in a country that had received large amounts of foreign aid from rich countries. Apparently, it didn’t work.
Chemical plant explosions in Japan kill one, may cripple global diaper output
By NBC News staff and wire services
OSAKA — Explosions at a chemical plant in Hyogo Prefecture on Saturday killed a firefighter and injured dozens of people, the Japan Times reported, citing local fire department and police officials said. Global production of diapers could be affected because the plant made a key ingredient in a resin used in them, Japanese media reported.
“Explosions at a chemical plant in Hyogo Prefecture on Saturday killed a firefighter and injured dozens of people, the Japan Times reported, citing local fire department and police officials said.”
Bomb squad detonates pipe bomb found near pipeline
The Allegheny County Bomb Squad detonated a live pipe bomb found Monday afternoon near a pipeline under construction off Rural Valley Road, Buffalo Township.
State police said Charles Nicholson of Bridgeville, a gas well driller, found the device about 1 p.m. partially buried near the line. Nicholson had been cleaning the work site.
A day when we remember, a day when we rightfully honor, those who have sacrificed so much so that we can enjoy those precious gifts that the Founders bequeathed to our care some 225 years ago.
We usually think of this in terms of those who have died fighting for and defending our country and it is proper and appropriate that we do so, for the price they paid to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity was to give up all those things for themselves so that we, we argumentative, vain, impetuous, loving, sharing and kind people that we all are at various times could enjoy them for better or worse.
But we must remember that we need not always look to the graveyard for those we need to honor and thank. Sacrifice in defense of our Liberty does not invariably lead to death, for did not the Founders also pledge their fortunes and their sacred honor when they stood against tyranny, when they stood against those who would deny others their basic rights of free expression?
Thus today we join with many others listed here and here and here and here and here and here among many many others (that I apologize for not listing) in standing up and saying that, no, we will not let this sort of assault go unanswered.
…..
You know what, I’ve been working on this in fits and starts this morning and I just finished reading Patterico’s story in Sis’s post. Nothing I can say will have the barest portion of the power of that.
FBI: Hundreds of Thousands May Lose Internet in July
For computer users, a few mouse clicks could mean the difference between staying online and losing Internet connections this summer.
Unknown to most of them, their problem began when international hackers ran an online advertising scam to take control of infected computers around the world. In a highly unusual response, the FBI set up a safety net months ago using government computers to prevent Internet disruptions for those infected users. But that system is to be shut down.
…I wanted to give you all a chance to check your IPs with their approved partner.
Here’s that most rarest of animals: an opinion piece at CNN that I agree pretty much 100% with
Here’s what Google knows about you, what it stores right there on its servers, waiting for a hacker:
Google has every e-mail you ever sent or received on Gmail. It has every search you ever made, the contents of every chat you ever had over Google Talk. It holds a record of every telephone conversation you had using Google Voice, it knows every Google Alert you’ve set up. It has your Google Calendar with all content going back as far as you’ve used it, including everything you’ve done every day since then. It knows your contact list with all the information you may have included about yourself and the people you know. It has your Picasa pictures, your news page configuration, indicating what topics you’re most interested in. And so on.
If you ever used Google while logged in to your account to search for a person, a symptom, a medical side effect, a political idea; if you ever gossiped using one of Google’s services, all of this is on Google’s servers. And thanks to the magic of Google’s algorithms, it is easy to sift through the information because Google search works like a charm. Google can even track searches on your computer when you’re not logged in for up to six months.
I’ve looked at reports on this new policy, though I haven’t read all of it as this author has, and I can tell you that as of March 1st I’m done with them. My google, gmail and youtube accounts will be closed. For my friends on various blogger, well, I will be only commenting there if I can do so anonymously from now on (this may in fact not be a loss for you). Any searches I do will be using bing or some other engine, not google.
I will be contacting my Congress Critters and requesting that they introduce the following legislation:
The Preservation Of Online Privacy Act of 2012
(POOP for short)
As of 30 (thirty) days from the date of POOP’s passage no company may keep data containing identifiable information concerning internet usage of an individual for more than 3 (three) years from the date of the online activity without either express written consent of the person(s) so involved or a court order specifically listing potential felonies and specifically limited thereto. The data must be deleted on a monthly basis.
Violations of POOP will be punishable by fines of at least but not limited to $1000 per mb (megabyte) of data in the aggregate per day.
Occupy Wall Street has just announced they’re going to SHUT DOWN Wall Street Thursday.
Bring a raincoat, I guess, for flying feces, etc.
UPDATE: Here’s the “official” line, augmenting blurb I heard at work on Cavuto:
Protesters hope to shut down Wall Street on Thursday — home to the New York Stock Exchange — by holding a street carnival to mark the two-month anniversary of their campaign against economic inequality.
Protest organizers acknowledged that the “day of action” could be the group’s most provocative yet, and could lead to mass arrests and further strain relations with city authorities.
“I think we’re certainly going into this with our eyes wide open, but (the march is) to provoke ideas and discussion, not to provoke any violent reactions,” said Occupy Wall Street spokesman Ed Needham.
“I think it is very difficult to do a day of action and not expect some sort of reaction from the (authorities),” he said.
The protesters plan to march to Wall Street from their camp headquarters in a park two blocks away and then spread out across the city’s subway system to tell the stories of disenfranchised Americans. They will reconvene later on Thursday for a march across the Brooklyn Bridge.
Perhaps you’ve performed that old camping trick before, where you created a lantern by shining a flashlight into a water-filled bottle. While that may have helped you find your marshmallows in the dark, imagine how much brighter that bottle would have been if it were lit directly by the Sun. Bright enough, it turns out, that it could brilliantly light up the interior of a one-room house. That’s the idea behind the Isang Litrong Liwanag (A Liter of Light) project – it’s bringing daytime indoor lighting to the homes of the poor in the Philippines, by installing water-filled plastic pop bottles through holes in their roofs.
As Chandler residents Joshua Seto, 27, and his fiancée, Cara Christopher, walked over to a Fry’s Food Store for refreshments, he tried securing her pink handgun in the front waistband of his pants.
Security researchers at CA Security have identified new malware that surreptitiously records conversations on Android phones, the company wrote Monday on its official blog.
The new threat to devices running Google’s Android mobile operating system is an advance on earlier Android Trojans examined by CA Security that unleash payloads which log incoming and outgoing call details and durations in a text file, according to researcher Dinesh Venkatesan.
“This Trojan is more advanced as it records the conversation itself in ‘amr’ format,” Venkatesan said. “Also it [conducts] many other malicious activities that we have seen in many of the earlier malware incidents targeted for [the] Android platform.”
I still have my raspberry colored Razr and I talk nice to it constantly.
Of the seven passengers in the Expedition, five of them – two female and three male – were ejected from the vehicle onto the center median as well as the northbound local lanes. The three male ejected passengers are confirmed dead.
None of the five ejected were wearing their seat belts.
That’s the SUV in the center in the Express lanes, and to the right you can see where the people ended up in the Local lanes. You can tell from the photo how foggy it was yesterday, too.
(CBS News) On Monday, June 13, CBS News will conduct a special town hall on the economy with key Republicans, hosted by “Face the Nation” anchor Bob Schieffer and “The Early Show” co-Anchor Erica Hill.
Many of the questions used will be from viewers. You can send them to us via:
E-mail, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Senators Tom Coburn (Okla.), Representatives Paul Ryan (Wis.) and Allen West (Fla.), and Governor Nikki Haley (S.C.) will address economic issues during the town hall before a live audience at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. CBS News Business and Economics Correspondent Rebecca Jarvis will facilitate questions from a nationwide online audience via a special partnership with YouTube.
The town hall will be broadcast on Tuesday, June 14 during the 8:00-9:00 a.m. ET hour of “The Early Show.” Excerpts from the June 13 event will be broadcast later that evening on the “CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley.”
As some of our more astute readers have noticed the Style Sheets have been, um, feisty over the past day or so. I had updated one of the cache plugins (the one that allows us to weather all those Instalanches) and it evidently wasn’t so polished. So I ixnayed it and when a few hours later the author released an “improved” version I loaded that.
Scientists have identified four new species of brain-controlling fungi that turn ants into zombies that do the parasite’s bidding before it kills them.
Identified from samples collected at two sites in Brazil’s tropical rain forest, each of the four species specializes in controlling a different species of carpenter ant.
…Once it infects an ant, the fungus uses as-yet-unidentified chemicals to control the ant’s behavior, Hughes told LiveScience. It directs the ant to leave its colony (a very un-ant-like thing to do), vote Democratic in every election it can and bite down on the underside of a leaf — the ant’s soon-to-be resting place. Once it is killed by the fungus, the ant remains anchored in place, thanks to its death grip on the leaf.
Ultimately, the fungus produces a long stalk that protrudes from the ant’s head (much like Nancy Pelosi’s hairstyle), shooting spores out in the hopes of infecting other ants. Two of the four newly discovered species also sprouted smaller stalks elsewhere, including from the victim’s feet and lower leg joints – the equivalent of knees.
UPDATE 2-BP owns part of Noble well that got first permit
HOUSTON, March 1 (Reuters) – BP Plc, (BP.L) (BP.N) whose
Macondo well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico caused the worst
offshore oil spill in U.S. history last year, co-owns the well
that was granted the first deepwater drilling permit since the
disaster.
Declares “ETHANOL SUCKS FOR ENGINES and the new EPA regs will MAKE IT WORSE“. (Oh, yes they did!)
Watch the report. It’s a good one.
When you pump gas into your car… it probably never crosses your mind that you could be damaging your engine.
But mechanics say the 10 % of ethanol that’s added to our gas can cause big problems.
Now the federal government has approved increasing that level to 15 % for vehicles made after 2001.
That could result in a lot more car repairs. This is what the inside of a steel fuel line looks like after just a few years of gasoline with 10 % ethanol running through it.
Now the federal government says 15 percent ethanol is ok.
But mechanics here say it will cause more engine trouble.
…Since ethanol is made from corn food experts warn that increased corn production to make more ethanol will also result in higher food prices.
Ethanol Bad for Engines
Biz, Nanny State, People, Public Service Announcement | tree hugging sister | 
May 11, 2013 6:19 pm | 
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