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Except for David Ward, president of the American Council on Education, every member of the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education found enough to endorse in the draft the panel produced last month to support it over all. All of them, certainly, also found some aspects of the report objectionable, yet swallowed those objections and agreed, at a public meeting August 10, to sign the report. The panel’s members agreed at the time that the report would undergo only minor copy editing and “wordsmithing�? between then and when it was formally presented to Education Secretary Margaret Spellings later this month.

That agreement was nearly imperiled last weekend, though. Gerri Elliott, corporate vice president at Microsoft’s Worldwide Public Sector division, sent an e-mail message to fellow commissioners Friday evening saying that she “vigorously�? objected to a paragraph in which the panel embraced and encouraged the development of open source software and open content projects in higher education.

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An Ohio legislative panel yesterday rubber-stamped an unprecedented process that would allow sex offenders to be publicly identified and tracked even if they’ve never been charged with a crime.

No one in attendance voiced opposition to rules submitted by Attorney General Jim Petro’s office to the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review, consisting of members of the Ohio House and Senate.

The committee’s decision not to interfere with the rules puts Ohio in a position to become the first state to test a “civil registry.”

The concept was offered by Roman Catholic bishops as an alternative to opening a one-time window for the filing of civil lawsuits alleging child sexual abuse that occurred as long as 35 years ago.

Innocent until proven guilty hasn’t just gone out the window, it has taken the frame, and most of the wall, with it.

What if, instead of challenging this stupidity in court, somebody just walked into a police station with the Ohio phone book, and accused everybody in that book with rape?

And how about this part?

A civilly declared offender, however, could petition the court to have the person’s name removed from the new list after six years if there have been no new problems and the judge believes the person is unlikely to abuse again.

From the hearing six years later:

The answer to the following question will determine whether or not you are taken off the sex offender list.

Have you quit molesting children?

Answer “yes,” and you’ve just admitted to the crime and you will be sentenced.

Answer “no,” and you’re on the list for another six years.

Choose wisely, Citizen.

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Now this is something you should get a group of people together and do for real, like the inprov anywhere people do.

That should piss of security for real..

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The television campaign ran alongside a ‘Childhood Hero Schools Program’ in which primary school students were asked to draw and nominated their local childhood hero in their school community. Home and Away stars Chris Hemsworth and Kate Ritchie were to visit the three winning schools. See the Childhood Hero web site and read the press release on this year’s report, “Every child needs a hero�? (pdf).

Johnny Cash’s rendition of the Nine Inch Nails song, “Hurt�?:

I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that’s real
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything

I wear this crown of thorns.
upon my liar’s chair.
Full of broken thoughts.
I can not repair.
Beneath the stains of time
The feelings disappear.
You are someone else.
I am still right here.

What have I become
My sweetest friend?
Everyone I know goes away
In the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way

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I think someone should try to blow up a plane with a piece of ID, just to watch the TSA’s mind implode.

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The amount of nicotine in most cigarettes rose an average of almost 10 percent from 1998 to 2004, with brands most popular with young people and minorities registering the biggest increases and highest nicotine content, according to a new study.

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The UK cabinet Office has been forced to pull one of the public service videos it published on YouTube due to copyright violation.

A video called Transformational Government can no longer be viewed on the site, instead users get a box of red text stating: “This video has been removed at the request of copyright owner COI Television because its content was used without permission.”

COI Television is actually part of the Cabinet Office, and the video was about how the government could be more coordinated.

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By the late 1990s, Tarby and his team had discovered fumarase deficiency was occurring in the greatest concentration in the world among the fundamentalist Mormon polygamists of northern Arizona and southern Utah.

Of even greater concern was the fact that the recessive gene that triggers the disease was rapidly spreading to thousands of individuals living in the community because of decades of inbreeding.

Fast-forward to the present: About half of the 8,000 people living in the towns are blood relatives of two of the founding families that settled in the 1930s on the desolate high desert plateau against the base of the Vermillion Cliffs.

Religious leaders control all marriages in the community, and many of these relatives have married or likely will marry in the future. Some of these marriages will include parents who both are carriers of the fumarase deficiency gene, making it certain that more children will be afflicted with the disease.

[..]

“They think it is a test from God,” says Wyler, who was born and raised in the FLDS before he was booted out.

Just think of it as evolution in action.

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Hey, friend! Has this ever happened to you?

Client: “Hi there, Designer. How’s the new website coming?�?
Designer: “Oh, just swell! I’ve added a big orange aquafied “Buy now!�? button here on your homepage, set up your blog, given you RSS 2.0 syndication and enabled customer tagging on all your products. Not to mention the fact that I’ve used no less than 24 gradients, drop shadows on everything and big friendly fonts for that youthful, warm, feel-good vibe.�?
Client: “Uh… you do remember that this is an Amish mortuary, right?�?
Designer: grumble… “No one appreciates my art…�?

Don’t you wish there was—oh, I don’t know—a card or something that you could pull out at such moments and in no uncertain terms establish that you know exactly what grieving widows and fatherless children are looking for in a web app?

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Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 15:56:01 -0600

Last night circa 2300 our BAX aircraft flight 705BX encountered
severe weather over Alberta Canada. The aircraft was cruising at
35,000 feet when it encountered tennis ball sized hail. The
pictures below show some of the damage. All landing lights were
destroyed, as was the radar. The crew was forced to make a “blind”
emergency landing. Upon safe return to the ground the first officer
and flight engineer quit. It is expected that the aircraft is a
total loss as its structural integrity has been compromised.

(more pictures at the link above)

My inner nerd just went Woa!