GOP Buckling on Tax Cuts for The Rich
Keep it one bill and force them to pick between Americans and Corporate America.
Expose the wolf under the sheep's clothing.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
GOP Buckling on Tax Cuts for The Rich
Keep it one bill and force them to pick between Americans and Corporate America.
Expose the wolf under the sheep's clothing.
Hundreds of Thousands of Dead Fish -- and a Dead Whale -- Discovered Near BP Oil Spill
Hundreds of Thousands of Dead Fish -- and a Dead Whale -- Discovered Near BP Oil Spill
The Most Dangerous Man in America Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
The Most Dangerous Man in America Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers: "The Most Dangerous Man in America" is the story of what happens when a former Pentagon insider, armed only with his conscience, steadfast determination, and a file cabinet full of classified documents, decides to challenge an "Imperial" Presidency-answerable to neither Congress, the press, nor the people-in order to help end the Vietnam War.
In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg shook America to its foundations when he smuggled a top-secret Pentagon study to the New York Times that showed how five Presidents consistently lied to the American people about the Vietnam War that was killing millions and tearing America apart. President Nixon's National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger called Ellsberg "the most dangerous man in America," who "had to be stopped at all costs."
But Ellsberg wasn't stopped. Facing 115 years in prison on espionage and conspiracy charges, he fought back. Ensuing events surrounding the so-called Pentagon Papers led directly to Watergate and the downfall of President Nixon, and hastened the end of the Vietnam War. Ellsberg's relentless telling of truth to power, which exposed the secret deeds of an "Imperial Presidency," inspired Americans of all walks of life to forever question the previously-unchallenged pronouncements of its leaders.
"The Most Dangerous Man in America" tells the inside story, for the first time on film, of this pivotal event that changed history and transformed our nation's political discourse. It is told largely by the players of that dramatic episode-Ellsberg, his colleagues, family and critics; Pentagon Papers authors and government officials; Vietnam veterans and anti-war activists; Watergate principals, attorneys and the journalists who both covered the story and were an integral part of it; and finally-through White House audiotapes-President Nixon and his inner circle of advisors.
Watch the documentary here.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Muslims and Islam Were Part of Twin Towers’ Life
Muslims and Islam Were Part of Twin Towers’ Life
Michael McElroy for The New York Times
Sinclair Hejazi Abdus-Salaam, now retired in Boca Raton, Fla., prayed at the trade center.
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
Published: September 10, 2010
Sometime in 1999, a construction electrician received a new work assignment from his union. The man, Sinclair Hejazi Abdus-Salaam, was told to report to 2 World Trade Center, the southern of the twin towers.In the union locker room on the 51st floor, Mr. Abdus-Salaam went through a construction worker’s version of due diligence. In the case of an emergency in the building, he asked his foreman and crew, where was he supposed to reassemble? The answer was the corner of Broadway and Vesey.
Over the next few days, noticing some fellow Muslims on the job, Mr. Abdus-Salaam voiced an equally essential question: “So where do you pray at?” And so he learned about the Muslim prayer room on the 17th floor of the south tower.
He went there regularly in the months to come, first doing the ablution known as wudu in a washroom fitted for cleansing hands, face and feet, and then facing toward Mecca to intone the salat prayer.
On any given day, Mr. Abdus-Salaam’s companions in the prayer room might include financial analysts, carpenters, receptionists, secretaries and ironworkers. There were American natives, immigrants who had earned citizenship, visitors conducting international business — the whole Muslim spectrum of nationality and race.
Leaping down the stairs on Sept. 11, 2001, when he had been installing ceiling speakers for a reinsurance company on the 49th floor, Mr. Abdus-Salaam had a brief, panicked thought. He didn’t see any of the Muslims he recognized from the prayer room. Where were they? Had they managed to evacuate?
He staggered out to the gathering place at Broadway and Vesey. From that corner, he watched the south tower collapse, to be followed soon by the north one. Somewhere in the smoking, burning mountain of rubble lay whatever remained of the prayer room, and also of some of the Muslims who had used it.
Given the vitriolic opposition now to the proposal to build a Muslim community center two blocks from ground zero, one might say something else has been destroyed: the realization that Muslim people and the Muslim religion were part of the life of the World Trade Center.
Opponents of the Park51 project say the presence of a Muslim center dishonors the victims of the Islamic extremists who flew two jets into the towers. Yet not only were Muslims peacefully worshiping in the twin towers long before the attacks, but even after the 1993 bombing of one tower by a Muslim radical, Ramzi Yousef, their religious observance generated no opposition
“We weren’t aliens,” Mr. Abdus-Salaam, 60, said in a telephone interview from Florida, where he moved in retirement. “We had a foothold there. You’d walk into the elevator in the morning and say, ‘Salaam aleikum,’ to one construction worker and five more guys in suits would answer, ‘Aleikum salaam.’ ”
One of those men in suits could have been Zafar Sareshwala, a financial executive for the Parsoli Corporation, who went to the prayer room while on business trips from his London office. He was introduced to it, he recently recalled, by a Manhattan investment banker who happened to be Jewish.
“It was so freeing and so calm,” Mr. Sareshwala, 47, said in a phone conversation from Mumbai, where he is now based. “It had the feel of a real mosque. And the best part is that you are in the epicenter of capitalism — New York City, the World Trade Center — and you had this island of spiritualism. I don’t think you could have that combination anywhere in the world.”
How, when and by whom the prayer room was begun remains unclear. Interviews this week with historians and building executives of the trade center came up empty. Many of the Port Authority’s leasing records were destroyed in the towers’ collapse. The imams of several Manhattan mosques whose members sometimes went to the prayer room knew nothing of its origins.
Yet the room’s existence is etched in the memories of participants like Mr. Abdus-Salaam and Mr. Sareshwala. Prof. John L. Esposito of Georgetown University, an expert in Islamic studies, briefly mentions the prayer room in his recent book “The Future of Islam.”
Moreover, the prayer room was not the only example of Muslim religious practice in or near the trade center. About three dozen Muslim staff members of Windows on the World, the restaurant atop the north tower, used a stairwell between the 106th and 107th floors for their daily prayers.
Without enough time to walk to the closest mosque — Masjid Manhattan on Warren Street, about four blocks away — the waiters, chefs, banquet managers and others would lay a tablecloth atop the concrete landing in the stairwell and flatten cardboard boxes from food deliveries to serve as prayer mats.
During Ramadan, the Muslim employees brought their favorite foods from home, and at the end of the daylight fast shared their iftar meal in the restaurant’s employee cafeteria.
“Iftar was my best memory,” said Sekou Siby, 45, a chef originally from the Ivory Coast. “It was really special.”
Such memories have been overtaken, though, by others. Mr. Siby’s cousin and roommate, a chef named Abdoul-Karim Traoré, died at Windows on the World on Sept. 11, as did at least one other Muslim staff member, a banquet server named Shabir Ahmed from Bangladesh.
Fekkak Mamdouh, an immigrant from Morocco who was head waiter, attended a worship service just weeks after the attacks that honored the estimated 60 Muslims who died. Far from being viewed as objectionable, the service was conducted with formal support from city, state and federal authorities, who arranged for buses to transport imams and mourners to Warren Street.
There, within sight of the ruins, they chanted salat al-Ghaib, the funeral prayer when there is not an intact corpse.
“It is a shame, shame, shame,” Mr. Mamdouh, 49, said of the Park51 dispute. “Sometimes I wake up and think, this is not what I came to America for. I came here to build this country together. People are using this issue for their own agenda. It’s designed to keep the hate going.”
SourceOlbermann Blasts Media For Ground Zero Mosque Reporting - 2 Mosques inside WTC tower
Keith Olbermann named the entire media his "worst person in the world" Monday for what he called a failure to report that there were two places where Muslims worshiped in the World Trade Center before the 9/11 attacks, even as they covered the controversy over the proposed Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero.
On Saturday, New York Times religion columnist Samuel Freedman wrote about a Muslim prayer room that had existed on the 17th floor of the South Tower up until its destruction in 2001. Muslims working in the North Tower also used a stairwell to pray there, he reported.
"Given the vitriolic opposition now to the proposal to build a Muslim community center two blocks from ground zero," Freedman wrote, "one might say something else has been destroyed: the realization that Muslim people and the Muslim religion were part of the life of the World Trade Center."
On his show, Olbermann blasted the press for failing to find this out:
"Throughout this stupid, childish, xenophobic debate, there was nobody who mentioned this stunningly relevant fact until [Freedman] did it in the New York Times this past Saturday, September 11th," he said. "There were two Mosques in Ground Zero the moment it became Ground Zero."
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Source
I said to a girl to look for a wealthy boyfriend. This suggestion is not unrealistic.
MSNBC: Cenk on War Profiteers & US-Saudi Weapons Deal
MSNBC: Cenk on War Profiteers & US-Saudi Weapons Deal
US scientists learn how to levitate tiny objects
Jan 7 (Reuters) - U.S. scientists have found a way to levitate the very smallest objects using the strange forces of quantum mechanics, and said on Wednesday they might use it to help make tiny nanotechnology machines.
They said they had detected and measured a force that comes into play at the molecular level using certain combinations of molecules that repel one another.
The repulsion can be used to hold molecules aloft, in essence levitating them, creating virtually friction-free parts for tiny devices, the researchers said.
Federico Capasso, an applied physicist at Harvard University in Massachusetts, whose study appears in the journal Nature, said he believed that detection of this force opened the possibility of a whole new class of tiny gadgets.
The team, including researchers at the National Institutes of Health, has not yet levitated an object, but Capasso said he now knows how to do it. "This is an experiment we are sure will work," he said. His team has already filed for patents.
"By reducing the friction that hinders motion and contributes to wear and tear, the new technique provides a theoretical means for improving machinery at the microscopic and even molecular level," Dr. Duane Alexander of the NIH's National Institute of Child Health and Human Development said.
"The emerging technology of nanomechanics has the potential to improve medicine and other fields," he said in a statement.
The discovery involves quantum mechanics, the principles that govern nature's smallest particles.
By altering and combining molecules, tiny machines could be devised which could have applications in surgery, manufacturing food and fuel and boosting computer speed.
The discovery arose from Capasso's prior work as vice president of physical research at Bell Labs, the research arm of telecoms gear marker Lucent Technologies, now Alcatel-Lucent (ALUA.PA).
"I started to think how can I use these exotic quantum mechanical forces for technology," he said in a telephone interview.
Bell had been working on new devices known as Micro Electromechanical Systems or MEMS, the technology used in air bag sensors to measure deceleration of cars. "We started to play with nanomechanics or micromechanics," Capasso said.
He knew that as devices became smaller and smaller, they would fall prey to what is known as the Casimir force, an attractive force that comes into play when two very tiny metallic surfaces make very close contact.
In very small objects, this force can cause moving parts to stick together, an effect known as stiction.
A Russian team had predicted this force could be reversed using the right combination of materials.
For Capasso's experiment, the team immersed a gold-coated sphere in a liquid and measured the force as the sphere was first attracted to a metallic plate, then repelled from a plate made from silica.
Capasso said levitating is next. "We just have to do it," he said. (Editing by Maggie Fox and David Storey)
Many confess to crime but are innocent, study shows
Many confess to crime but are innocent, study shows
By JOHN SCHWARTZ | New York Times | Posted: Monday, September 13, 2010 11:50 pm
Steve Hebert for The New York Times
Eddie Lowery spent 10 years in prison after confessing to a rape he did not commit. He got a $7.5 million settlement.
James Estrin/The New York Times
Jeffrey Deskovic spent 16 years in prison for murder. DNA evidence cleared him before trial, but he was convicted anyway.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Eddie Lowery lost 10 years of his life for a crime he did not commit. There was no physical evidence at his trial for rape, but one overwhelming factor put him away: He confessed.
At trial, the jury heard details that prosecutors insisted only the rapist could have known, including that the rapist hit the 75-year-old victim in the head with the handle of a silver table knife he found in the house. DNA evidence would later show that another man committed the crime. But that vindication would come only years after Lowery had served his sentence and was paroled in 1991.
“I beat myself up a lot” about having confessed, Lowery said in a recent interview. “I thought I was the only dummy who did that.”
But more than 40 others have given confessions since 1976 that DNA evidence later showed were false, according to records compiled by Brandon L. Garrett, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. Experts have long known that some kinds of people — including the mentally impaired, the mentally ill, the young and the easily led — are the likeliest to be induced to confess. There are also people like Lowery, who says he was just pressed beyond endurance by interrogators.
New research shows how people who were apparently uninvolved in a crime could provide such a detailed account of what occurred, allowing prosecutors to claim that only the defendant could have committed the crime.
An article by Garrett draws on trial transcripts, recorded confessions and other background materials to show how incriminating facts got into those confessions — by police introducing important facts about the case, whether intentionally or unintentionally, during the interrogation.
To defense lawyers, the new research is eye opening.
“In the past, if somebody confessed, that was the end,” said Peter J. Neufeld, a founder of the Innocence Project, an organization based in New York. “You couldn’t imagine going forward.”
The notion that such detailed confessions might be deemed voluntary because the defendants were not beaten or coerced suggests that courts should not simply look at whether confessions are voluntary, Neufeld said.
“They should look at whether they are reliable,” he said.
Garrett said he was surprised by the complexity of the confessions he studied.
“I expected, and think people intuitively think, that a false confession would look flimsy,” like someone saying simply, “I did it,” he said.
Instead, he said, “almost all of these confessions looked uncannily reliable,” rich in telling detail that almost inevitably had to come from the police. “I had known that in a couple of these cases, contamination could have occurred,” he said, using a term in police circles for introducing facts into the interrogation process. “I didn’t expect to see that almost all of them had been contaminated.”
Of the exonerated defendants in the Garrett study, 26 — more than half — were “mentally disabled,” under 18 at the time or both. Most were subjected to lengthy, high-pressure interrogations, and none had a lawyer present. Thirteen were taken to the crime scene.
Lowery’s case shows how contamination occurs. He had come under suspicion, he now believes, because he had been partying and ran his car into a parked car the night of the rape, generating a police report. Officers grilled him for more than seven hours, insisting from the start that he had committed the crime.
Lowery took a lie detector test to prove he was innocent, but the officers told him that he had failed it.
“I didn’t know any way out of that, except to tell them what they wanted to hear,” he recalled. “And then get a lawyer to prove my innocence.”
Proving innocence after a confession, however, is rare. Eight of the defendants in Garrett’s study had actually been cleared by DNA evidence before trial, but the courts convicted them anyway.
In one such case involving Jeffrey Deskovic, who spent 16 years in prison for a murder in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., prosecutors argued that the victim may have been sexually active and so the DNA evidence may have come from another liaison she had. The prosecutors asked the jury to focus on Deskovic’s highly detailed confession and convict him.
While Garrett suggests that leaking facts during interrogations is sometimes unintentional, Lowery said that the contamination of his questioning was clearly intentional.
After his initial confession, he said, the interrogators went over the crime with him in detail — asking how he did it, but correcting him when he got the facts wrong. How did he get in? “I said, ‘I kicked in the front door.’” But the rapist had used the back door, so he admitted to having gone around to the back. “They fed me the answers,” he recalled.
Some defendants’ confessions even include mistakes fed by the police. Earl Washington Jr., a mentally impaired man who spent 18 years in prison and came within hours of being executed for a murder he did not commit, stated in his confession that the victim had worn a halter top. In fact, she had worn a sundress, but an initial police report had stated that she wore a halter top.
Steven A. Drizin, the director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern University School of Law, said the significance of contamination could not be understated. While errors might lead to wrongful arrest, “it’s contamination that is the primary factor in wrongful convictions,” he said. “Juries demand details from the suspect that make the confession appear to be reliable — that’s where these cases go south.”
Jim Trainum, a former policeman who now advises police departments on training officers to avoid false confessions, explained that few of them intend to contaminate an interrogation or convict the innocent.
“You become so fixated on ‘This is the right person, this is the guilty person’ that you tend to ignore everything else,” he said. The problem with false confessions, he said, is “the wrong person is still out there, and he’s able to reoffend.”
Trainum has become an advocate of videotaping entire interrogations. Requirements for recording confessions vary widely. Ten states require videotaping of at least some interrogations, like those in crimes that carry the death penalty, and seven state supreme courts have required or strongly encouraged recording.
These days Lowery, 51, lives in suburban Kansas City, in a house he is renovating with some of the $7.5 million in settlement money he received, along with apologies, from officials in Riley County, Kan., where he was arrested and interrogated.
He has trouble putting the past behind him.
“I was embarrassed,” he said. “You run in to so many people who say, ‘I would never confess to a crime.’”
He does not argue with them, because he knows they did not experience what he went through.
“You’ve never been in a situation so intense, and you’re naive about your rights,” he said. “You don’t know what you’ll say to get out of that situation.”
Applauding a Youtube Commenter
I'd like to applaud a commenter on Youtube that was comdemning Bill Gates promoting the decrease of end of life care so that teachers could keep their jobs. I know they're both completely separate issues, but apparently Bill doesn't.
My reply to the above problem was:
Well said, well said indeed.
My reply to the above problem was:
"Has this man ever designed a budget?
~~~~~~~~~
But the reply by MrDeathsmiles was better:
But the reply by MrDeathsmiles was better:
"Sick globalist eugenicist.Sure, Bill, you look so nice and nerdy. You give the perception that death can be a good thing. However, a society that chooses life over death for simply their own existence, is no society at all. You're part of the globalist movement to dissect and destroy moral values, all while doing it in a friendly tone with a smile on your face.
The day where we have to destroy other lives to justify our existence, is the day we lose our souls and no longer deserve life."
Well said, well said indeed.
Stress hormone heart death link
Stress hormone heart death link
Stress leads to cortisol being produced High levels of the stress hormone cortisol are closely linked to death from cardiovascular disease, a Dutch study suggests.
In a six-year study of 860 over-65s, those with the highest levels of cortisol had a five-fold risk of death from cardiovascular disease.
No link was found between high cortisol levels and other causes of death.
British experts said the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism study was "helpful".
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
End Quote Ellen Mason British Heart FoundationThere are other chemicals in our body besides cortisol which play a part when we're stressed”
Cortisol is produced in order to help the body recover from stress and regain its physiological stability.
But very high levels have been linked to risk factors for cardiovascualr disease, such as the metabolic syndrome - symptoms of which include obesity and high blood pressure - and accelerated atherosclerosis - where fatty deposits build up on the walls of the arteries.
In this study, researchers measured urinary cortisol levels in each participant. During the six years covered by the study, 183 people died. Cause of death was ascertained from death certificates.
The third of the subjects with the highest urinary cortisol had a five-fold increased risk of dying of cardiovascular disease.
'A lot to learn'Nicole Vogelzangs of the University Medical Center, who led the study, said: "Previous studies have suggested that cortisol might increase the risk of cardiovascular mortality, but until now, no study had directly tested this hypothesis.
"The results of our study clearly show that cortisol levels in a general older population predict cardiovascular death, but not other causes of mortality."
"Our study shows that older persons with high levels of cortisol have an increased risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. This finding significantly adds evidence to the belief that cortisol can be damaging to the cardiovascular system."
Ellen Mason, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: "Stress is already associated with an increased risk of heart disease and this study throws up more evidence about the role of cortisol.
"However, there are other chemicals in our body besides cortisol which play a part when we're stressed out. So although this study helps, there is still a lot left to learn.
"It's important we all try and find ways to cope with stress which don't involve unhealthy habits that increase your risk of heart disease, such as smoking, drinking too much alcohol and eating foods high in saturated fat and salt."
How good software makes us stupid
How good software makes us stupid
London cab drivers must undertake a test on the city's streets before they can work, but Sat-Nav could make that knowledge unnecessary Imagine for a moment that you have thumbed a ride in one of London's iconic black cabs.
"Where to, guv?" he asks, in typical cockney-twang. You tell him.
"No problem - let me just enter that into my sat-nav…"
It sounds unnatural, almost deceitful, that any self-respecting London cabbie would ever utter those words.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
End Quote Nicholas CarrIn many ways I admire Google, but I think they have a narrow view of the way we should be using our minds.”
After all, a taxi driver's ability to know every twist and turn of the capital's streets is the stuff of legend.
It's not optional - unless drivers pass a formidable test - called "The Knowledge" - they are not allowed to head out onto the roads in one of the iconic vehicles.
But with satellite-navigation technology now well established as a cheap, reliable way of being shown the way ahead, one expert has warned that we could actually lose the intellectual capacity to remember vast amounts of information - such as tricky routes through the capital city.
"The particular part of our brain that stores mental images of space is actually quite enlarged in London cab drivers," explained Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.
"The longer you've been a cab driver the larger that part of your brain is."
Mr Carr explained to Gareth Mitchell on BBC World Service's Digital Planet that one study revealed concerns over technology use for cabbies.
"Almost certainly we'll see a diminishment, or even an eradication, of that special quality of their brains."
Altered activityIt could be argued that if a sat-nav can save months of studying for The Knowledge, while, in theory at least, making travelling around easier, then that can only be a good thing.
Not so, argues Mr Carr. Technology, particularly the web, has been found to have lasting effects on our brains, altering our ability to carry out certain tasks.
Mr Carr says the simpler that sites like Google get, the less able we are to learn "The most interesting [study] had people who hadn't had experience with the web begin to use Google, for just an hour a day, and begin searching and surfing."
The results showed how even just a small amount of use triggered varying patterns of brain activity.
"On the one hand, a lot of their decision-making parts of their brain were activated which means it can help keep a mind sharp, for instance, as we get older.
"But it also seemed to indicate the kind of patterns of activity that would make it hard for you to concentrate. If you're always solving problems and making decisions you can't have the calm mind you get when you read a book."
The key to making us concentrate, Mr Carr suggests, is perhaps to make tasks difficult - a theory which flies in the face of software designers the world over who constantly strive to make their programs easier to use than the competition.
Industrial viewGoogle is the prime culprit, Mr Carr says.
"In many ways I admire Google, but I think they have a narrow view of the way we should be using our minds.
"They have this very much of an industrial view that everything's about how efficiently you can find that particular bit of information you need - and then move on to the next."
He argues that this even applies to projects like Google Books - designed to bring literacy to a bigger audience, and to make the world's knowledge more accessible.
"They're scanning these books, I think, with a view that will not take in the whole books, but they'll become more content for its search engine.
"What it's purveying is this view of all information being delivered as snippets. When you go to a Google Books page, you're not engaged in a long narrative in the book."
In his book, Mr Carr cites an article on this website written by technology commentator Bill Thompson.
Continue reading the main story
Digital Planet
- Digital Planet is the weekly technology programme broadcast from the BBC World Service
- It is broadcast on Tuesday at 1232GMT and repeated at 1632GMT, 2032GMT and on Wednesday at 0032GMT
The article described a simple experiment where a puzzle needed to be solved using a computer program. One half of participants were given a 'good' program - it gave hints, was intuitive and generally helped the user to their goal.
The other half took on the same puzzle, but with software which offered little to make the task easier.
"The people who had the weakest software, who had to struggle with the problem, learned much more than the people with the most helpful software," Mr Carr explained.
"Months later - the people who had the unhelpful software actually could remember how to do the puzzle, and the people with the helpful software couldn't."
Mr Carr says that this simple experiment could suggest that as computer software becomes easier to use, making complicated tasks easier, we risk losing the ability to properly learn something - in effect "short-circuiting" the brain.
"When you think about how we're coming to depend on software for all sorts of intellectual chores, for finding information, for socialising - you need to start worrying that it's not giving us, as individuals, enough room to act for ourselves."
Ofsted says special needs used too widely
Ofsted says special needs used too widely
Some schools were failing to spot pupils' needs early enough Thousands of pupils are being wrongly labelled as having special educational needs when all they require is better teaching and support, Ofsted says.
The watchdog said up to a quarter of pupils in England identified as having special needs would not be labelled as such if schools focused more on teaching for all their children.
It said the term "special needs" was used too widely.
The National Union of Teachers said such claims were "insulting and wrong".
More than a fifth of school-age students in England have been diagnosed with some form of special educational need (SEN), which range from physical disabilities to emotional and behavioural problems.
The wide-ranging study was Ofsted's biggest yet into a system that some parents have complained draws them into long and difficult battles to secure effective support for their children.
Inspectors visited 228 nurseries, schools and colleges in 22 local authorities, and carried out detailed case studies of 345 young people with disabilities and special educational needs.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
End Quote Christine Blower NUTTeachers do a great job in often very difficult circumstances to meet the needs of all their pupils, and for Ofsted to suggest otherwise is both insulting and wrong”
Ofsted's chief inspector, Christine Gilbert, said: "Although we saw some excellent support for children with special educational needs, and a huge investment of resources, overall there needs to be a shift in direction."
Some 54% of students with SEN - those with the least severe problems - are assessed by their schools, while the 2.7% with the most acute difficulties go through a complex process of assessment under their local authority to obtain a "statement" of their needs.
Ofsted's inspectors said the term SEN was used too widely and assessments varied widely in different areas.
They said schools should "stop identifying pupils as having SEN when they simply need better teaching and pastoral support".
As many as half of all pupils identified for school action "would not be identified as having SEN if schools focused on teaching and learning for all", the report said.
The report's author, Janet Thompson, said these cases included children whose general educational needs had not been identified early enough - such as children who struggled with reading and later developed behavioural difficulties as a result.
But, she said, there were also cases where schools had labelled students as having SEN - such as GCSE students becoming demotivated - when they just needed better support.
Clogged system'The report said the system focused too much on statements of need and not enough on whether support services were actually producing real progress.
It also highlighted problems faced by students aged over 16 with SEN, for whom it said choice was limited.
Ofsted said some schools had been over-identifying students with SEN in the belief that increased figures would boost league table scores on the progress pupils made, but there was no evidence this was a system-wide problem.
While extra funding available in some areas for children with SEN offered an "obvious motivation" for schools to over-diagnose children, inspectors did not find evidence that this was taking place.
Ms Gilbert said that if SEN cases were over-identified, "the system becomes clogged" with pupils with less severe needs and "consumes vast amounts of time, energy, money and means that insufficient attention may be given to those with really more complex needs".
Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, the largest teachers' union, said: "Teachers do a great job in often very difficult circumstances to meet the needs of all their pupils, and for Ofsted to suggest otherwise is both insulting and wrong."
She that all too often schools were "left without the necessary backup and support that is required" to meet pupils' needs.
The NASUWT teachers' union said it was "unacceptable to scapegoat teachers" for the variability in identifying and supporting children with SEN.
And the Association of Teachers and Lecturers said the report had overlooked factors such as school league tables "which put pressure on schools to narrow their curriculum and teach to the test", and teacher-training, "which ill-prepares teachers for working with children with SEN and disabilities".
Inclusion policyChildren's Minister Sarah Teather is calling for submissions for a Green Paper on the SEN provision system.
She says she wants to overhaul the system to give more choice for parents.
The Labour government tried, under a policy of "inclusion", to place pupils with special educational needs in mainstream schools wherever possible.
The Conservative-Liberal Democrat government says, in its coalition agreement, that it will "prevent the unnecessary closure of special schools, and remove the bias towards inclusion".
The number of state and private special schools in England has fallen from 1,197 in 2000 to 1,054 in 2010.
Diamond star thrills astronomers
Diamond star thrills astronomers
 A diamond that is almost forever |
The cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallised carbon, 4,000 km across, some 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus.
It's the compressed heart of an old star that was once bright like our Sun but has since faded and shrunk.
Astronomers have decided to call the star "Lucy" after the Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
Twinkle twinkle
"You would need a jeweller's loupe the size of the Sun to grade this diamond," says astronomer Travis Metcalfe, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who led the team of researchers that discovered it.
The diamond star completely outclasses the largest diamond on Earth, the 546-carat Golden Jubilee which was cut from a stone brought out of the Premier mine in South Africa.
The huge cosmic diamond - technically known as BPM 37093 - is actually a crystallised white dwarf. A white dwarf is the hot core of a star, left over after the star uses up its nuclear fuel and dies. It is made mostly of carbon.
For more than four decades, astronomers have thought that the interiors of white dwarfs crystallised, but obtaining direct evidence became possible only recently.
The white dwarf is not only radiant but also rings like a gigantic gong, undergoing constant pulsations.
"By measuring those pulsations, we were able to study the hidden interior of the white dwarf, just like seismograph measurements of earthquakes allow geologists to study the interior of the Earth.
"We figured out that the carbon interior of this white dwarf has solidified to form the galaxy's largest diamond," says Metcalfe.
Astronomers expect our Sun will become a white dwarf when it dies 5 billion years from now. Some two billion years after that, the Sun's ember core will crystallise as well, leaving a giant diamond in the centre of the solar system.
"Our Sun will become a diamond that truly is forever," says Metcalfe.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Michael Moore: 'We Should Always Stand Up Against the Angry Mob
Michael Moore: 'We Should Always Stand Up Against the Angry Mob'
Dwight Eisenhower, 1957, Dedication of Islamic Center in Washington; "I should like to assure you, my Islamic friends, that under the American Constitution, under American tradition, and in American hearts, this Center, this place of worship, is just as welcome as could be a similar edifice of any other religion. Indeed, America would fight with her whole strength for your right to have here your own church and worship according to your own conscience ...
"This concept is indeed a part of America, and without that concept we would be something else than what we are."
Colin Powell, 2008; "Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? ... Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourself in this way."
Cuba to cut one million public sector jobs
Cuba to cut one million public sector jobs
Cuba's government employs about 85% of the country's 5.1 million workers Cuba has announced radical plans to lay off huge numbers of state employees, to help revive the communist country's struggling economy.
The Cuban labour federation said more than a million workers would lose their jobs - half of them by March next year.
Those laid off will be encouraged to become self-employed or join new private enterprises, on which some of the current restrictions will be eased.
Analysts say it is biggest private sector shift since the 1959 revolution.
Cuba's communist government currently controls almost all aspects of the country's economy and employs about 85% of the official workforce, which is put at 5.1 million people.
"Our state cannot and should not continue maintaining companies, productive entities, services and budgeted sectors with bloated payrolls and losses that hurt the economy," the labour federation said in a statement.
"Job options will be increased and broadened with new forms of non-state employment, among them leasing land, co-operatives, and self-employment, absorbing hundreds of thousands of workers in the coming years."
Free enterprise?The governing Communist Party has indicated that strict rules limiting private enterprise will be relaxed and many more licenses will be issued allowing people to become self-employed.
Existing private businesses will be allowed to employ staff for the first time.
President Raul Castro has said the state's role in the economy must shrink A minority of Cuban workers already work for themselves, for example as hairdressers and taxi-drivers, or running small family restaurants.
There is also a thriving black economy, with many trades people working independently without proper permission from the state.
President Raul Castro outlined the changes in a speech in August, saying the state's role in the economy had to be reduced.
"We have to end forever the notion that Cuba is the only country in the world where you can live without working," he said.
Cuba's state-run economy has been gripped by a severe crisis in the past two years that has forced it to cut imports.
It has suffered from a fall in the price for its main export, nickel, as well as a decline in tourism.
Growth has also been hampered by the 48-year US trade embargo.
Mr Castro became Cuba's leader when his brother, Fidel Castro, stepped aside because of ill-health in 2006.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
You allocate money properly, that's understood. But you can't say one part is stealing from another part, when they're completely separate categories.
I could just as easily say the war in Iraq is stealing teachers jobs, or the President's income is stealing teaching jobs.
The problem is not end of life care, it's mis-allocations of funds."