Civic Report 51 | What’s in a Name? The Decline in The Civic Mission of School Names
# Of almost 3,000 public schools in Florida, five honor George Washington, compared with eleven named after manatees.
# In Minnesota, the naming of schools after presidents declined from 14 percent of schools built before 1956 to 3 percent of schools built in the last decade.
# In New Jersey, naming schools after people dropped from 45 percent of schools built before 1948 to 27 percent of schools built since 1988.
# In the last two decades, a public school built in Arizona was almost fifty times more likely to be named after such things as a mesa or a cactus than after a president.
# In Florida, nature names for schools increased from 19 percent of schools built before 1958 to 37 percent of schools built in the last decade.
# Similar patterns were observed in all seven states analyzed.
# Today, a majority of all public school districts nationwide do not have a single school named after a president.
Month: July 2007
Powerball Winner’s Belongings To Be Auctioned
Spoils for sale: Lottery winner’s belongings go on the block
Can you believe this story appears on Friday the 13th?
In November 2005, he was charged with possession of cocaine and heroin. Edwards pleaded guilty to possession of narcotics paraphernalia, a first-degree misdemeanor, and the cocaine charge was dropped.
A court hearing is scheduled July 24 to determine the status of the heroin charge, according to the state attorney’s office.
Last July, Edwards’ $1.2 million home was auctioned for $400,000.
And Saturday, much of the home’s contents will go on the auction block at a Riviera Beach warehouse where Edwards spent his final days in Palm Beach County. Continue reading “Powerball Winner’s Belongings To Be Auctioned”
Dog contraceptive signals end to castration
Dog contraceptive signals end to castration – life – 11 July 2007 – New Scientist
Male dogs can breathe a sigh of relief. The days of removing their testicles to stop them breeding or to curb aggressive behaviour may be numbered. A contraceptive implant that halts testosterone and sperm production for months at a time is expected to gain European approval within weeks, while steps are being taken to enable the drug to be sold in the US
IEA sees oil supply crunch looming
reportonbusiness.com: IEA sees oil supply crunch looming
Carlton Palmer writes about this link he sent us: Well it’s official now The wests own energy Think tank created in the wake of the the Saudi/Iran oil shocks of the 70-early 80’s is warning of whats has been known for awhile.
In late June Jim Buckee retiring Ceo of Tailsman Energy at the Canadian Assoc. of Petro Producers annual confab. hand drew some graphs of the decling production of the Super Elephant mother of all oil fields in the World that would be Saudi’s Ghalwar and despite “Parabolic” investment in all the best super straw oil recovery technology the Halliburtons and Shlumberger have on offer, nothing is steming the decline.He showed this to a small group of longtime friends and analyts off the record. Sooooooo don’t count on the Sunni Saudi.s to be the big swinging dick producer of last resort making up for shortfalls as it has historicaly done.
Not anymore! Click the link above for the IEA take. And they don,t want to alarm the markets or the masses. Translation they are being conservative,Oh and have a Great Day!
Global oil companies will reap the windfall from growing demand and constrained supply for years to come – and consumers should expect higher fuel prices for the foreseeable future, the International Energy Agency says in a report released Monday.
In its medium-term outlook, the agency warns that higher crude prices over the last several years have failed to trigger the typical market response of slowing demand and additional supplies.
Instead, while demand growth has slowed in the developed world, booming economies in Asia and Middle East have taken up the slack. The emerging economies and developing world will soon account for nearly half the crude oil demand in the world, according to the IEA, which is the energy monitoring arm of the developed world.
At the same time, the agency is forecasting only modest growth in crude oil supplies, as the producers struggle to offset declines from existing fields.
Free VoIP Phone List
My VoIP Provider – VoIP Services – – Free VoIP Phone Service
We have identified 13 VoIP providers offering free VoIP services to a few selected countries and have displayed them in a matrix for an easy overview. Click the My VOIP link above for the list.
The first generation of VoIP
services — Vonage, Skype and others — used computer and Internet technologies to make voice communications cheaper (and often free). Now a second generation of services is integrating VoIP with mobile and POTS handsets and services as they try to find ways to compete with their more established big brothers. Click to read more
New Way To Fight Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria?
newsobserver.com | Researchers fight resistant bugs
So far, UNC laboratory research on E. coli bacteria brought a hoped-for result — the off-the-shelf bone loss drugs clodronate and etidronate blocked a key mechanism used to squirt genetic changes from one bad bug into another, including the gene that helps ward off an antibiotic attack.
Most antibiotics attack infectious bugs by breaking down the cell wall that holds bacteria together or knocking out the “protein factory” necessary for growth and survival. But if Lujan’s discovery works on other stubborn bacteria, the long-term result could be a new family of antibiotics based on a type of drug already approved for use in humans.
The Original Lawn Chair Baloonist
With Kent Couch in the news, for balooning193 miles in a lawn chair; here was his inspiration:
“Larry Walters was your average blue collar worker – he drove a big truck, 5 ½ days a week. On Saturday afternoons (he lived in Los Angeles), he would get home around lunch time, walk into his house, open his refrigerator, take out his 6-pack (of Pepsi), then make his peanut butter sandwiches. He would take them outside and sit in his chaise lounge chair. As he would sit there (he had a large 6-8 foot fence all around his little yard) in his little piece of green grass, he wondered what his neighbors were doing – what they were thinking about, what they looked like. In the suburbs of Los Angeles, the climate was so close, and yet, despite the closeness, there was no knowing of each other. After doing this for about 6 months – every Saturday afternoon – he said he wanted to meet his neighbours, and he came up with an ingenious idea: 
A Lightning Bolt From Heaven?
keyetv.com – Religious Book Seller Struck By Lightning
If you are looking for a message from heaven, this is not what this poor guy had in mind. Is God trying to tell you something, like maybe you’re working for the wrong sect? 
“I heard a boom, and I looked and the guy jumped back, and he just laid there, stiff,” said witness Maria Martinez.
Paramedics say Marian was not breathing and his heart was not beating when they arrived, but they were able to revive him and rushed him to Jackson Memorial hospital, where he was in critical condition Sunday night. Continue reading “A Lightning Bolt From Heaven?”
Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature
Psychology Today: Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature
Men in monogamous societies imagine they would be better off under polygyny. What they don’t realize is that, for most men who are not extremely desirable, polygyny means no wife at all, or, if they are lucky, a wife who is much less desirable than one they could get under monogamy.
What distinguishes Islam from other major religions is that it tolerates polygyny. By allowing some men to monopolize all women and altogether excluding many men from reproductive opportunities, polygymy creates shortages of available women. If 50 percent of men have two wives each, then the other 50 percent don’t get any wives at all.
So polygyny increases competitive pressure on men, especially young men of low status. It therefore increases the likelihood that young men resort to violent means to gain access to mates. By doing so, they have little to lose and much to gain compared with men who already have wives. Across all societies, polygyny makes men violent, increasing crimes such as murder and rape, even after controlling for such obvious factors as economic development, economic inequality, population density, the level of democracy, and political factors in the region.
However, polygyny itself is not a sufficient cause of suicide bombing. Societies in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean are much more polygynous than the Muslim nations in the Middle East and North Africa. And they do have very high levels of violence. Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from a long history of continuous civil wars—but not suicide bombings.
The other key ingredient is the promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr in Islam. The prospect of exclusive access to virgins may not be so appealing to anyone who has even one mate on earth, which strict monogamy virtually guarantees. However, the prospect is quite appealing to anyone who faces the bleak reality on earth of being a complete reproductive loser. Continue reading “Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature”
How Much Caffeine In That Little Soda?
Blackwell Synergy – J Food Science, OnlineEarly Articles (Article Abstract)
Some of the more common national-brand carbonated beverages analyzed in this study with their caffeine contents were Coca-Cola (33.9 mg/12 oz), Diet Coke (46.3 mg/12 oz), Pepsi (38.9 mg/12 oz), Diet Pepsi (36.7 mg/12 oz), Dr Pepper (42.6 mg/12 oz), Diet Dr Pepper (44.1 mg/12 oz), Mountain Dew (54.8 mg/12 oz), and Diet Mountain Dew (55.2 mg/12 oz). The Wal-Mart store-brand beverages with their caffeine contents were Sam’s Cola (12.7 mg/12 oz), Sam’s Diet Cola (13.3 mg/12 oz), Dr Thunder (30.6 mg/12 oz), Diet Dr Thunder (29.9 mg/12 oz), and Mountain Lightning (46.5 mg/12 oz)