Donnerstag Welt zusammentreiben
Thursday world roundup
WORLD: Art is good. A wonderful source of classical artwork, such as the above, is the Art Renewal Center website. It's literally packed with thousands of high resolution museum images. Even if you're not an art enthusiast, I guarantee you it's worth the trip.
USA: Denial is bad for your health. A Ms. Martinez in Colorado protests a school's policy to send home health reports as well as report cards. The reason? Her daughter opened and read it, and it caused "emotional distress" when she saw that the school considers her "overweight".
"My daughter is big boned," said Martinez.Oh brother...
NEW ZEALAND: Liberated women, and how... According to a recent survey conducted by Durex condoms, of 26 countries and involving 26,000 respondents, women in New Zealand are the most promiscuous in the world, with a lifetime average of 20.4 sex partners per year! I can't find what country's women had the least, since the full report isn't available for download yet. But their 2005 survey of both men and woman, showed India at the bottom, with an average of 3.0 partners, and Turkey with the most, with 14.5. That seems a little hard to swallow, but that's what they came up with... Incidentally, European countries ran the gamut, while the USA was near the average, with 10.7 partners, compared to a global average of 9.
YEMEN: Terrorist walks Absolute outrage from a US "ally". A terrorist named Jamal al-Badawi, who was involved in the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, turned himself in to Yemeni authorities, and was promptly released on his own recognizance. The United States still has a bounty on his head. Will the DOJ seek extradition? According to the US State Department, Yemen is an ally in the war on terror, and receives military aid and funding from the United States. Maybe it's time to reconsider that. More info at A Blog for All.
UK: Disturbing the academic comfort zone. A Nobel prize winning geneticist, and the co-discoverer of DNA, James D. Watson, announces that black people are less intelligent than white people. It's controversial, but not entirely new. Professors such as Rushton, Jensen, Shockley, Ellis, and Murray have all made similar claims in the past (to the detriment of their careers). There should be a qualifier, however: this is mostly based on IQ tests, and one problem lost in this emotional debate is that IQ tests cannot measure the full range of a person's intelligence, such as artistic ability, emotional intelligence, navigation, etc. Serpico at The English Tavern has a good point, noting the irony of the same liberal community that is celebrating Al Gore for his recent Nobel Prize win, is now shunning and vilifying this Nobel recipient. This is an academic hot potato if there ever was one, but hopefully it will one day be seriously studied, not left to the fringes out of political correctness. Current rational debate is all but impossible. The Fark.com headline is appropriate: "Nobel Prize-winning geneticist claims black people aren't as smart as white people. Naturally, a calm assessment of his data and conclusions will ensue".
USA: Affirmative action is good for you. Just don't ask us what's in it...A controversial study published in the Stanford law review suggests that affirmative action (university preferences for racial minorities) actually hurt rather than help their recipients:
[The study] concluded that several thousand would-be black lawyers either dropped out of law school or failed to pass the bar because of affirmative action.This has prompted several groups to request that the California Bar association release its data from the last 30 years on student test scores, law school admissions, academic performance and bar passage rates. Put in a very uncomfortable position (and seeing the existence of affirmative action threatened), of course they refused:
Known as the ‘mismatch’ effect, Sander claims students who are unprepared and whose academic credentials are below the median are admitted to law schools they are unqualified to attend. If those same students instead were to go to less elite or competitive schools, more would graduate, pass the bar and become lawyers.
"The release (bar exam) applicants sign does not allow us to release the information to third parties,"Since they could just release the data without names, that excuse just doesn't wash.
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1 comments:
Big boned?? My mother used to use that expression 20 years ago, I thought it had died out by now. No one has 'big bones', it's called FAT. Use it and lose it.
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