Miss Emily Goes To The Movies

X-Men: The Last Stand
Review by Emily Trosprel 8th Grade BHMS
Senior Entertainment Editor

The third and supposedly final film of the adventures of the X-Men mutants may arrive in theaters with a bigger bang ($120 million gross over the weekend) then the previous two movies, but in reality, the film itself is less involving, has less depth, and is downright less enjoyable then its predecessors. However, that still by no means makes it unentertaining. The plot is straightforward enough. A cure for mutancy is discovered and creates mixed feelings among the mutants it concerns. On one hand you have those mutants who strive to fit in and jump at the chance to be normal. Then you have those with drastically opposite opinions such as Magneto (Ian McKellen) who view the so called cure as an attempt to exterminate the mutant race. Fighting brews when Magneto forms a powerful group who set out to destroy the source of the cure. Charles Xavier’s (Patrick Stewart) X-Men are drawn into the conflict along with newly resurrected Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) or rather her alter ego Phoenix whose powers are limitless and very deadly.

The main problem with “X-Men: The Last Stand” is that it tries too cram too much into it’s relatively measly 100 minute runtime- too many characters, too many story lines, and too much action (yes, there is such a thing as too much action). While there is nothing wrong with its numerous visual effects spectacles and climactic battle scenes, they leave little room for the character development that was so abundant in the first two films. The huge number of characters (at least a dozen) also doesn’t do the movie any favors. Many of the old ones are killed off early on to make room for the new, and the presence of other previously prominent characters, Anna Paquin as Rogue in particular, are nearly reduced to mere cameos.

While all of that may sound harsh, the movie really is quite decent as far as summer blockbusters go. It certainly succeeds in its goal to entertain. While director Brett Ratner may be criticized at superficiality of the film (which in reality was mostly the screenwriters’ faults anyway) he certainly does know how to make a heart-pounding action film, and that’s evident here. Viewers may find their heads spinning during one particularly eye-popping sequence that involves the redirection of the Golden Gate Bridge. One additional aspect of the movie to look forward to is Ian McKellen as Magneto who is the only one whose screen time does not seem squashed and delivers as delightful a performance as ever. Hardcore fans of the “X-Men” comics or the previous two films are sure to be disappointed at the effects-driven rollercoaster ride of action that is “X-Men: The Last Stand”, but for those of us who are looking for some decently-made grand entertainment, this movie will serve us well.

Three out of four stars. for X-Men: The Last Stand

My Bad

Jinxed him never should have posted it. Went out on Toccata aren't there enough American words?

Wikipedia
Toccata (Italian for touched) is a piece of classical music for a keyboard instrument, generally emphasizing the dexterity of the performer. Less frequently, the name is applied to works for multiple instruments (the opening of Claudio Monteverdi's opera Orfeo being a notable example).

National Spelling Bee

Brandywine's Philip Calafati (No 214) is hanging in there through the first 3 rounds.
Already has spelled intercalary and whisteable. Round 4 is in progress.

This Guy Should Teach At Brandywine

Every year, physics teacher David Lapp brings his Korean War era M-1 carbine to school, fires a shot into a block of wood and instructs his students to calculate the velocity of the bullet.

It is a popular experiment at Mill Valley's Tamalpais High School, where students are exposed to several unique stunts that Lapp performs in his five classes every year to illustrate inertia, velocity and other complex formulae.

The rifle demonstration would not even be an issue if an anonymous parent had not complained.

Lapp, a former military police officer who has been teaching for 20 years, said it is the first complaint ever lodged against the so-called "ballistic pendulum" experiment, which he contends is completely safe.

"I've been doing this for years," said Lapp, who skipped two or three years after Columbine. "The students love it. They ask about it very early on in the year. It's one of the more exciting demonstrations."

Exciting is not the word, said Ted Feinberg, the assistant executive director for the National Association of School Psychologists.

"It's just absolute madness, from my point of view," said Feinberg, one of the founding members of the National Emergency Assistance Team, which has responded to most of the school shootings in the country. "It is not only crazy in concept, in light of the world we live in it is absolutely irresponsible." Article

Mr. Feinberg would probably stroke out if he saw the Brandywine mascot. Since this is in Marin County, CA he probably wouldn't have a problem with kids smoking pot in a Psychology class.

For Fans of 24

If you have ever wondered how many people Jack Bauer has killed while saving the US and the world one count has it up to 130 bad guys over a five day period. Next season they should send Jack to Iraq, it would be the new Switzerland by the end of the day.

Conservative Rock Songs

Rock 'n' roll is not all about sex and drugs some of the lyrics do have a more conservative/libertarian perspective. So for a rock out Memorial Day here is the top 50 complied by National Review Online

Samples
1. “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” by The Who.
The conservative movement is full of disillusioned revolutionaries; this could be their theme song, an oath that swears off naïve idealism once and for all. “There’s nothing in the streets / Looks any different to me / And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye. . . . Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss.” The instantly recognizable synthesizer intro, Pete Townshend’s ringing guitar, Keith Moon’s pounding drums, and Roger Daltrey’s wailing vocals make this one of the most explosive rock anthems ever recorded — the best number by a big band, and a classic for conservatives.

Here is one for members of the taxpayers association.
2. “Taxman,” by The Beatles.
A George Harrison masterpiece with a famous guitar riff (which was actually played by Paul McCartney): “If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street / If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat / If you get too cold, I’ll tax the heat / If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet.” The song closes with a humorous jab at death taxes: “Now my advice for those who die / Declare the pennies on your eyes.”

You have to love any song that tells Neil Young to shut up and go back to Canada.
4. “Sweet Home Alabama,” by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
A tribute to the region of America that liberals love to loathe, taking a shot at Neil Young’s Canadian arrogance along the way: “A Southern man don’t need him around anyhow.”

One for the people fighting Longswamp Development
13. “My City Was Gone,” by The Pretenders.
Virtually every conservative knows the bass line, which supplies the theme music for Limbaugh’s radio show. But the lyrics also display a Jane Jacobs sensibility against central planning and a conservative’s dissatisfaction with rapid change: “I went back to Ohio / But my pretty countryside / Had been paved down the middle / By a government that had no pride.”

36. “Government Cheese,” by The Rainmakers.
A protest song against the welfare state by a Kansas City band that deserved more success than it got. The first line: “Give a man a free house and he’ll bust out the windows.”

40. “Wake Up Little Susie,” by The Everly Brothers.
A smash hit in 1957, back when high-school social pressures were rather different from what they have become: “We fell asleep, our goose is cooked, our reputation is shot.”

Be a much better world if more women would follow this advice.
50. “Stand By Your Man,” by Tammy Wynette.
Hillary trashed it — isn’t that enough? If you’re worried that Wynette’s original is too country, then check out the cover version by Motörhead.

They also have links to download. So don't complain about the music this weekend it is not too loud you are just too old or maybe even a liberal.

Day By Day

The best non-syndicated cartoon around. Like Doonesbury but Day By Day is actually funny. Probably why the Reading Eagle will never carry it.

Miss Emily Goes To The Movies

The Da Vinci Code
Review by Emily Trosprel 8th Grade BHMS
Senior Entertainment Editor

When you think about it, “The Da Vinci Code” has just about everything going for it- a stellar, well-known cast, an Oscar-winning director and writer, and enough publicity to just about make sure that there isn’t a person left in the country who hasn’t heard of the film. However, with all of that comes great expectations, and for the most part the movie manages to live up to those expectations. The film begins with a murder in the Louvre- a very cryptic murder as the victim had placed clues all around him before his death. Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) becomes the prime suspect and flees with cryptologist Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou). From there they become involved with a conspiracy of epic size that if revealed could shake the very foundations of Christianity itself. (Yes, technically the entire movie is Catholic-bashing, but the claims made are so preposterous that they could be no more obviously fictional.)

It’s the supporting actors who are the real standouts acting wise in “The Da Vinci Code”. Paul Bettany as the self-flagellating villainous monk and Ian McKellen as the Grail-obsessed Brit rival even Hanks in their scenes. In fact, it isn’t until McKellen makes his first appearance at the beginning of the second hour that the movie really starts to hit its stride. Veteran director Ron Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman do a decent job adapting Dan Brown’s novel to film and wisely stay rigorously close to the book. You shouldn’t go into the theaters to see “The Da Vinci Code” expecting a perfect film or one that compares to the novel that has sold 60 million copies, but nevertheless you can expect an intelligent and engrossing thriller that is worth two and a half hours of your time.

Three out of four stars. for The Da Vinci Code

Money and Sports

Reading the attempts of the Saints negotating for a new quarterback and the inflated prices

Back in 1972 the Saints drafted Archie Manning( For you younguns out there the father of Payton and Eli Manning). The Saints tried to low-ball Manning and his agent Frank Crosthwaite. Negotiations began in Oxford at the home of Ole Miss legendary coach John Vaught. The Saints made an offer and before Crosthwaite could answer, Vaught interrupted, telling the Saints negotiator. "My gosh son, Archie made more money to play football up here!"

The negotiations went downhill from there. Manning missed the first two weeks of training camp before agreeing to a five-year contract worth $410,000. The current draftee will sign for more than 50 times that.

Practical Advise For The Graduate

Forget the soul search, just do something - The Boston Globe: "When it comes to finding a career, the huge soul search is hugely overrated.
At some point -- usually much earlier than people think -- you should just start doing something. Anything."

Thought For The Day

In his latest book, Revolutionary Wealth, co-written with his wife Heidi, Alvin Toffler diagrams the varying speeds in which institutions change. The couple uses a series of figurative cars on the freeway to make their point. Zooming along at 100 MPH "is a car representing the fastest-changing major institution in America today -- the company or business," the Tofflers write. By contrast, a car driven by government and regulatory agencies would be puttering at a speed of 25 MPH. Meanwhile, bringing up the rear, at 10 miles per hour, shuddering along "with a flat tire and steam coming out its radiator" is the American school system. "Is it possible that it costs $400 billion to maintain this broken heap? The answer is yes, every year."

A textbook case of failure

An excellent article on the terrible state of the quality of textbooks in the US. They are written for the approval of two opposite states Texas and California. Texas approval is domonated by right wing groups and California is dominated by groups whose main focus is "social content standards”. The end result are bloated textbooks that offend and teach no one.
********
President Bush’s No Child Left Behind initiative put almost every imaginable part of the U.S. education system under a microscope, establishing national standards for teacher training, student testing and basic funding. But glaring in its omission from the program is any significant examination of that most basic of classroom tools, the textbook.

If America’s textbooks were systematically graded, Wang and other scholars say, they would fail abysmally.

American textbooks are both grotesquely bloated (so much so that some state legislatures are considering mandating lighter books to save students from back injuries) and light as a feather intellectually, flitting briefly over too many topics without examining any of them in detail. Worse, too many of them are pedagogically dishonest, so thoroughly massaged to mollify competing political and identity-group interests as to paint a startlingly misleading picture of America and its history.

Textbooks have become so bland and watered-down that they are “a scandal and an outrage,” the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a nonprofit education think tank in Washington, charged in a scathing report issued a year and a half ago.
“They are sanitized to avoid offending anyone who might complain at textbook adoption hearings in big states, they are poorly written, they are burdened with irrelevant and unedifying content, and they reach for the lowest common denominator,” Diane Ravitch, a senior official in the Education Department during the administrations of Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, wrote in the report’s introduction.
“As a result of all this, they undermine learning instead of building and encouraging it,” she added. MORE

Everyone Is An Expert

In England the Beatles old company Apple Music has a lawsuit against Apple Computer. To discuss the case BBC brought in Guy Kewney an expert in the field of downloading music. When the intern went back to bring Mr. Kewney to be interviewed, instead ended up with Mr. Kewney's taxi driver. Worked out rather well with the driver being just as informative as most talking heads. Now the guy is a media star. YouTube has the very funny video, especially the look the driver has when they pin a mike on him.

Diversity,The Dismal Science And Freedom

Economics is referred to as the dismal science but few people know why. Most guess it has to do with Malthus, the Al Gore of the 18th century, gloomy predictions that population would always grow faster then the food and raw materials.

The phrase came about when economist and Christian evangelicals joined in the British Anti-Slavery movement. They both agreed that all humans were equal only differed on why the evangelicans drew their belief on the Bible and we were all children of Adam and Eve. The economist like John Stuart Mill, drawing on Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" fought for the idea that people were all the same and it was institutions that made some rich and some poor.

This drew the wrath of Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens and John Ruskin. Caryle "An Occasional discourse on the Negro Question." First published in 1849, it contains the following paragraph (Note: Exeter Hall was the political center of British evangelicalism)

"Truly, my philanthropic friends, Exeter Hall Philanthropy is wonderful; and the Social Science—not a "gay science," but a rueful—which finds the secret of this universe in "supply-and-demand," and reduces the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone, is also wonderful. Not a "gay science," I should say, like some we have heard of; no, a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, by way of eminence, the dismal science. ..These two, Exeter Hall Philanthropy and the Dismal Science, led by any sacred cause of Black Emancipation, or the like, to fall in love and make a wedding of it,—will give birth to progenies and prodigies; dark extensive moon-calves, unnameable abortions, wide-coiled monstrosities, such as the world has not seen hitherto!".

The economist view that every person, works on the same economic principals was also attacked by the founders of the eugenics movement W. R. Greg and Francis Galton. They attacked Mr. Mills idea that the Irish Problem could be solved by land reform or as John Lennon would said Give Ireland Back To The Irish.

Make them peasant-proprietors," says Mr. Mill. But Mr. Mill forgets
that, till you change the character of the Irish cottier, peasant-proprietorship
would work no miracles. He would fall behind the instalments of his
purchase-money, and would be called upon to surrender his farm. He would often
neglect it in idleness, ignorance, jollity and drink, get into debt, and have to
sell his property to the newest owner of a great estate. ... In two generations
Ireland would again be England's difficulty, come back upon her in an aggravated
form. Mr. Mill never deigns to consider that an Irishman is an Irishman, and not
an average human being—an idiomatic and idiosyncractic, not an abstract,
man..."Purchase the estates of English and absentee landlords, and then re-sell them to Irish middle-class tenants in decent-sized farms," says Mr. Bright, who, again, like Mr. Mill, fancies that an Irishman is an English or a Scotch or a Swiss or Belgian cultivator ...

We may laugh at these views now and feel superior but when it comes to the middle east aren't we still having those same arguments. The President view coming from both Harvard Business and religion believes that given the chance people will choose to be free is constantly being challenged by pragmatic people. It doesn't look that bright now but judging from my drive way trees have to produce a lot of seeds to get one to grow. Reference

Vote Today

Not sure why not much choice in this primary but seems like something a responsible web site would say.

Not Quite Clear

Agora Vox is a European news site with some nifty software that reads a web page on the fly. Just hit the little green button and under each article and some lady will read it. Supposedly it is for the blind but how does a blind person know the little green button is there?

Everyone Except Chelsea

News from The Associated Press: "NEW YORK (AP) -- After telling an audience that young people today 'think work is a four-letter word,' Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said she apologized to her daughter.

'I said, 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to convey the impression that you don't work hard,'' Clinton said Sunday in a commencement address at Long Island University. 'I just want to set the bar high, because we are in a competition for the future.'"

Clinton spoke to more than 2,000 graduates days after she criticized young people at a gathering of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington. In those remarks, she said young people have a sense of entitlement after growing up in a "culture that has a premium on instant gratification."

You Don't Have To Be Lucky To Win

Instead of earmarking lottery revenues to education (which is mostly a charade since money is fungible), why not earmark the revenues to private retirement accounts?

A lottery savings ticket would look just like a lotto ticket, scratch like a lotto ticket, cost a buck and pay out the same prizes. The only difference would be that half the revenue would be earmarked for a personal retirement savings account rather than for education. There would still be about a third for prizes and the remainder for administering the game.

Setting up a personal retirement account would be no more difficult than setting up a mutual fund. Players would receive a swipeable card that would automatically credit a portion of each losing ticket to the player's retirement account...

Some 20 million Americans spend at least $1,000 a year on lottery tickets. For these heavy purchasers the new tickets would increase their personal savings by $500 a year. Invested over 40 years, these savings tickets would generate an expected retirement nest egg of $200,000. This is a lot of money for the mostly not very prosperous crowd who buy lottery tickets every week. MORE

Feeling Guilty About Mother's Day

Well shop now for Father's day coming up in a month. Purvery of high fashion for men Thomas Pink of the UK has introduced the Commuter Shirt.

"The Commuter shirt has a special concealed pocket for mp3 player and hidden casing for headphone wires as well as a clever cuff pocket for credit or travel cards. Available in Blue and White. Button cuff. 100% Cotton - Machine washable - Imported.
$140"

How often do you see a classic cotton dress shirt reviewed at Gizmodo ?

Historical What If

Historical What If are always good for a discussion or a book. Victor Davis Hanson ( are people with three names a retro thing to compete with all the current one name people?) explores what if today's media was operating in the spring of 1945.

May 1, 1945—After the debacles of February and March at Iwo Jima, and now the ongoing quagmire on Okinawa, we are asked to accept recent losses that are reaching 20,000 dead brave American soldiers and yet another 50,000 wounded in these near criminally incompetent campaigns euphemistically dubbed “island hopping.” Article

Education In America Public Vs Private

The US is renowned through out the world for its colleges and universities while its K-12 system consistently fall short of world bench marks. Major difference is that colleges operate in an extremely competitive environment fighting for students and funding and K-12 is operated in a safe monopolistic, bureaucracy controlled system.

To see what a higher education system would look like using the same system as the US K-12 just look at France. Where since 1968 the government has offered free underfunded, overcrowded university education to everyone. One catch is students must attend the closest college to their high school, that should sound familiar. This article is from the NY Times which has never been confused as a part of the vast right wing, education hating, union busting, conspiracty.

Only 30 of the library's 100 computers have Internet access. The campus cafeterias close after lunch. Professors often do not have office hours; many have no office. Some classrooms are so overcrowded that at exam time many students have to find seats elsewhere. By late afternoon every day the campus is largely empty.

Sandwiched between a prison and an unemployment office just outside Paris, the university here is neither the best nor the worst place to study in this fairly wealthy country. Rather, it reflects the crisis of France's archaic state-owned university system: overcrowded, underfinanced, disorganized and resistant to the changes demanded by the outside world. Article

WallyWorld And How It Grew

Discussion in Topics about Wal-Mart and when it is coming. One item is seldom mentioned in the growth of Wal-Mart is how it invented the spatial diffusion method of starting new stores. K-Mart and Target skipped around the country cherry picking prime locations to reach their target customers. Wal-Mart was content to organically grow out from its base in Pigknucle, Arkansas like a creeping vine(or weed in some people's opinion) in all directions keeping its stores relatively close together. The median distance for a shopper is now 4.2 miles. In rural areas 5000 people within a five-mile radius, the median distance to a Wal-Mart is 14.3 miles, and to a Target it's 34.8 miles. Several benefits to this model

• Economize on Shipping, one truck can make several stops
• Transfer of experienced managers that were familiar with both the store and the customers.
• Instilling in its workers the "Wal-Mart culture". The company emphasizes its importance and would be difficult if stores were just scattered in small towns across the country.

To visualize this approach to growth from 1962 to 2004 here is a very short and a cooler then grits video. For more on the economics of density go here.

Bird Flu Hits Florida

Beautiful People Are Mean

It is actually a compliment if you are referred to as "Average Looking". A study using group pictures showed that as the pictures were mathematically averaged using increasingly larger number of faces. The perceived beauty was increased as the face approached the mean of the group.

In this series the first row is a composite of two face for both the boy and the girl. The next row is 4 followed by 8 then 16 and finally by 32.

One part of this study was how good looks effects children. A volunteer wore several "mission impossible" mask and interacted with a group of 1 year olds. The volunteer was not allowed to see how she looked, to eliminate any unconscious behaviour and the observers could not see how she looked they only studied the reactions of the children.

"The infants more frequently avoided the stranger when she was unattractive than when she was attractive, and they showed more negative emotion and distress in the unattractive than in the attractive condition. Furthermore, boys (but not girls) approached the female stranger more often in the attractive than in the unattractive condition, perhaps foreshadowing the types of interactions that may later occur at parties and other social situations when the boys are older!"

More evidence that guys are just born shallow.

Many studies, in addition, demonstrate that facial attractiveness is a significant correlate of children's popularity in the classroom, where the children are among familiar peers. One study we conducted shows that attractiveness is significantly related to social acceptance and popularity for girls throughout the entire school year. For boys, low attractiveness is associated with rejection by peers. Moreover, the likelihood that unattractive boys would be rejected increased, not decreased, as the school year progressed and as the boys became better acquainted.

Hate to mention this right before Mother's day but attractivness even effects Moms

In a study of more than 150 Caucasian, Mexican American, and African American
newborn infants and mothers, we found that moms of attractive first-born infants
were more attentive and affectionate than moms of less attractive first-borns.
All the mothers denied that attractiveness should matter in parental treatment
of children but their behavior belied their beliefs.

Thanks to Marginal Revolution for the pictures

Pop Out

Reason: Pop Out: The new school beverage policy won?t make students noticeably thinner: "Now that Chelsea is all grown up and living on her own, Bill and Hillary Clinton have turned their attention to raising other people's children. The senator is determined to protect them from video games, while the former president is saving them from soda.

The latter effort recently produced an agreement by the nation's leading soft drink companies aimed at changing the mix of beverages sold in schools. Clinton called the deal 'a bold step forward in the struggle to help 35 million young people lead healthier lives,' saying 'this one policy can add years and years and years to the lives of a very large number of young people.'
It's hard to see how. Although the agreement is supposed to help prevent obesity, it's unlikely to have a measurable effect on students' weight.

To begin with, drinks approved for sale under the new rules, including fruit juices and low-fat milk, have just as many calories as the now-verboten sugar-sweetened soda. If the aim is making kids thinner-as opposed to, say, addressing a heretofore unnoticed outbreak of scurvy--substituting orange juice (110 calories per eight ounces) for Coca-Cola (100 calories) won't accomplish anything.
At least high school students will be able to buy diet soda and other artificially sweetened beverages, which have no calories but are close substitutes for regular soft drinks. The new rules deny that option to elementary and middle school students, whose only beverage choices aside from water will be drinks with about as many calories as Mountain Dew."

Yocco Wins Schalles PA Pinner Award

Brandywine Heights sophomore, Matt Yocco, has been named the Schalles Pennsylvania Pinner Award winner for the 2005-2006 season. Yocco finished the season with a record of 49-4 with 38 pins. Excluding the six forfeits that he received, Yocco's pin percentage for the season was an amazing 80.85%. Yocco becomes only the second underclassman to win the award. Courtesy of Pennsylvania Wrestling Newsmagazine

Liberty is sweet

In November, 1775, the royal governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, offered freedom to any slaves who would join His Majesty’s troops in suppressing the American rebellion. In December a note reached the commander of Continental Army in Cambrigdge “There is not a man of them but would leave us if they believed they could make their escape,” a cousin of Washington’s wrote from Mount Vernon, adding , “Liberty is sweet.”

Escaped slaves that fought with the British were transported all over the globe after the British defeat at Yorktown, to Nova Scotia, Sierra Leone and Australia infamous Botany Bay. Many of the names were recorded in the “Book of Negroes,” a handwritten ledger listing the three thousand runaway slaves and free blacks who evacuated New York with the British that summer: “Harry Washington, 43, fine fellow. Formerly the property of General Washington; left him 7 years ago.” Tragedy was there to meet them where ever they landed.

Why they have been neglected in history is almost as interesting as their story. In the North abolitionists concentrated on telling the story of blacks that fought on the American side to build up their case that they had earned their freedom. Other historians in the nineteenth century wanted to paint a happy picture of life down on the farm “The relations between master and slave in Virginia were so pleasant,” one author wrote, that Britain’s “offer of freedom fell upon dull uninterested ears.” Since it didn't fit into the story they wanted to tell most writers just ignored slavery and the blacks that fought on both sides. Gary Nash observes in “The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of Revolution” slavery is so entirely missing from those histories that “it would appear that the British and the Americans fought for seven years as if half a million African Americans had been magically whisked off the continent.” Much More

The scientist in Aisle 3

TheStar.com - The scientist in Aisle 3: "Buyer beware: You're being watched. Anthropologists, sociologists and neurologists are feverishly studying how we shop and why we choose one product over another. These people are literally inside your head. "

So this is what you do with a sociology degree. The brain-scanning devices could be used in the classroom. Every student would wear one and the instructor could look at a screen in the back of the room to see if brains are actually working. Principals could scan the classrooms from their office to see how classes were going. On second thought probably not a good idea to know if teenage branis are actually working would be very discouraging for everyone involved.

Worried About Bird Flu

Well you can stop the Governor has a web site on that very issue .

Poo Bear Turns 80

Winnie the Pooh has joined the Queen in having an 80th birthday portrait. Jane Bown, who photographed the monarch earlier this year in celebration of her 80th, was given exclusive access to Britain's beloved bear at Hundred Acre Wood in Sussex. article

Miss Emily Goes To The Movies

Mission: Impossible III
Review by Emily Trosprel 8th Grade BHMS
Senior Entertainment Editor

There isn’t an intricate or realistic plot to be found in “Mission: Impossible III”, but what can be found instead are two hours of solid entertainment and nearly nonstop action. Sometimes there isn’t anything wrong with that. The plot centers on now retired super-spy Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) who is called back into action when rookie agent Lindsey Ferris (Keri Russell) goes missing. He leads a mission to rescue her and from there gets involved in an attempt to stop the calculating villain that is Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman) from selling a substance called the “Rabbits Foot” (what exactly it is is never specified, but it’s obviously given that it sure is dangerous).

Whatever Tom Cruise may do in his personal life, there are no arguments here that he fits perfectly into his role and gives a terrific performance. Outshining even Cruise however is recent Academy Award winner Philip Seymour Hoffman whose portrayal of his diabolical character is nothing short of chilling. Director J.J. Abrams, best known for his TV shows “Lost” and “Alias”, also brings in his own flair to the franchise, and indeed “M:I III” does resemble an elongated, bigger-budget episode of “Alias”- not necessarily a bad thing. “M:I III” certainly delivers what it promises- nonstop thrills and pure escapism. The season of summer blockbusters has officially begun.

Three out of four stars for Mission Impossible III

Gas Bank

First Fuel Banks bills itself as the only retailer in the country where customers can buy gasoline for the future and hedge against rising prices. It advertises no service charge and no storage charge, just a $1 lifetime membership fee. Altrichter said one of his neighbors got in at First Fuel Banks several years ago and is now is withdrawing from a reserve that cost him 99 cents a gallon. "How about that!" he said.
Both people and businesses buy gas from the company, which has six stations in and around this central Minnesota city. The city of St. Cloud fills its fleet of cars at the company's stations. Fill er up

Educational research is an education!

Amidst relentless warnings that America's schools are graduating only two-thirds of 18-year-olds, are failing to produce the scientists and engineers we need, and need to address stubborn racial achievement gaps, more than 14,000 of the nation's education researchers gathered recently in San Francisco for the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).
...
It was quickly made evident that the scholars had buckled down to the crucial, serious work at hand. Professors had unflinchingly tackled each of the five major fields of educational inquiry: imperialism; ghetto culture; hegemonic oppression and right-thinking multiculturalism: cyber-jargon; and the utterly incomprehensible. There was also some boring work on questions like student achievement and policy evaluation, but you only had to follow the crowds to see where the action was. More

Talent Isn't Everything

according to this study it is vastly overrated. An article that every parent, teacher and coach should read. Started out examining why the vast majority of European soccer players in the World Cup were born in the first months of the year. It turns out probably due to the way youth soccer leagues are orgainized. Age brackets have a Dec. 31st cutoff so coaches confusing maturity with talent give the early month kids more time, receiving the training, the deliberate practice and the feedback — to say nothing of the accompanying self-esteem — that will turn them into elites.

Their work, compiled in the "Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance," a 900-page academic book that will be published next month, makes a rather startling assertion: the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers — whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming — are nearly always made, not born. And yes, practice does make perfect. These may be the sort of clichés that parents are fond of whispering to their children. But these particular clichés just happen to be true.

Ericsson's research suggests a third cliché as well: when it comes to choosing a life path, you should do what you love — because if you don't love it, you are unlikely to work hard enough to et very good. Most people naturally don't like to do things they aren't "good" at. So they often
give up, telling themselves they simply don't possess the talent for math or skiing or the violin. But what they really lack is the desire to be good and to undertake the deliberate practice that would make them better. NY Times

The End Is Near

Mothers expect Damien on 6/6/06 - Sunday Times - Times Online: The approach of the sixth day of the sixth month of a new century's sixth year has prompted animated discussion among women participating in the website of Mother & Baby, a British parenting magazine.

One pregnant woman, Francesca Renouf, said she had been so worried that she had booked a doctor's appointment to ensure that she would avoid giving birth on the sixth.
....
On one popular evangelical website last week, a “rapture index” that calculates the likelihood of the Lord’s arrival stood at 156 — which the website declared was time to “fasten your seatbelts”. By contrast, another website claimed that the Antichrist had already arrived — he is supposedly George (six letters) Walker (six letters) Bush Jr (six letters), the president whose name adds up to 666. “The violence and destruction that began when Bush first entered office is now certain to culminate in the apocalypse, as predicted in the Bible over 2,000 years ago,” warned Stephen Hanchett at isbushantichrist.blogspot.com.

the numerological significance of “Fox”. As one contributor to Arianna Huffington’s blog pointed out last week, F is the sixth letter of the alphabet, O is the 15th letter (1+5=6) and X is the 24th letter (2+4=6). Could Fox be the studio of the Beast?

If You Are Driving This Weekend

Don't Worry

Just stumble about and be happy. Stumbling on Happiness was recommended by Tyler Cowen at Margin Review as the best book of the year. The author of Blink and the Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell in his review of the book stated:

Stumbling on Happiness is a book about a very simple but powerful idea.
What distinguishes us as human beings from other animals is our ability to
predict the future--or rather, our interest in predicting the future. We spend a
great deal of our waking life imagining what it would be like to be this way or
that way, or to do this or that, or taste or buy or experience some state or
feeling or thing. We do that for good reasons: it is what allows us to shape our
life. And it is by trying to exert some control over our futures that we attempt
to be happy. But by any objective measure, we are really bad at that predictive
function. We're terrible at knowing how we will feel a day or a month or year
from now, and even worse at knowing what will and will not bring us that
cherished happiness. Gilbert sets out to figure what that's so: why we are so
terrible at something that would seem to be so extraordinarily important?

In making his case, Gilbert walks us through a series of
fascinating--and in some ways troubling--facts about the way our minds work. In
particular, Gilbert is interested in delineating the shortcomings of
imagination. We're far too accepting of the conclusions of our imaginations. Our
imaginations aren't particularly imaginative. Our imaginations are really bad at
telling us how we will think when the future finally comes. And our personal
experiences aren't nearly as good at correcting these errors as we might
think.

Have a nice weekend even if you just stumble on it.

Sat Scores Down

Football Fans for Truth: "First, those who blithely accepted this radically new test without more scrutiny should be beaten bloody. The media can eat some of the blame, since they do little more than rewrite College Board press releases. But colleges themselves should be excoriated. They could have refused to accept the SAT until the test had been field-tested in its final form. Instead, they assisted the College Board in forcing the entire 2006 cohort to sit as lab rats for a 4-hour test--one that tested less and cost more money to boot. Head of the class: the University of California, which not only mandated the new test but weighted it more heavily, despite the unknowns.

Second, the media's near-total ignorance about the ACT did students and parents real harm this last year. The ACT is an excellent college admissions test that wasn't rewritten to please the University of California. Despite its excellent reputation, the ACT is rarely mentioned, while the media continues to treat the SAT as the only game in town. I tell all my students to take the ACT. Without fail, they tell me that their high school counsellors admonish them not to 'waste their time' on the ACT, a response echoed everywhere but the midwest. The students who took my advice were able to compare their evaluations and submit the better score--which, more often than not, was the ACT. This despite the fact that the ACT has more questions, more advanced math, and a grueling reading section.

For those in the 2007 cohort, it's not too late. Ignore your high school counsellor--they're all pretty much idiots anyway. Take the ACT in addition to (or instead of) the SAT. "

Quiz For May

If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring? Answer

Something to think about.

BBC NEWS Magazine What if...: "Suppose you could save five lives by taking one - what would be the correct thing to do? Such ethical dilemmas provide classic 'experiments' for philosophers. Here the Magazine presents four such quandaries and asks readers to vote on what they think is right. "

Mother Of Television Passes Away at 98

Yes kids at one time there was no MTV there wasn't even TV. Now we have 500 channels and nothing to watch but at one time there was just an empty spot in the den and people ate dinner staring at a wall. Interesting article but no mention of who invented the remote control.

As extraordinary as it may seem, one of the people who created the first television died last week when Elma G. "Pem" Farnsworth, author of the Distant Vision: Romance and Discovery on the Invisible Frontier and wife of Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of electronic television, died in Bountiful, Utah at the age of 98. Pem married Philo Taylor Farnsworth in 1926. She was on her husband's lab team, handling technical drawings for his experiments with transmitting pictures through the air and was present on September 7, 1927, in San Francisco when his invention of electronic television was first demonstrated successfully. Pem was the first person ever to appear on television (top main pic – the first electronic image) and is often referred to as "The Mother of Television." Her technical drawings of those early experiments are part of the permanent collection in the Smithsonian Institute. A devout Mormon, she derived her greatest satisfaction in encouraging young people, saying "if you believe you can do it, anything is possible." Article

Wired For Focus

A system developed by NASA helps some children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A video game that measures brain waves and rewards concentration. Details at Rawfeed

Yesterday illegal aliens walkout went rather well

now we could try a for a year.

That not going to happen because politicans are busy trading real voters for potential voters and unions are sacrificing their current members in the hope of increased future members. With that in mind states should look at how they raise taxes to minimize the pain.

From Virginia Postrel

Why (Legal or Illegal) Immigrants Are Better for Texas than California

It's the political economy, stupid. (Nasty phrase, that.) Texas has no income tax, which means public services are funded by sales and property taxes. Everyone, regardless of income or legal status, pays sales and property taxes, either directly or indirectly through rent. California, by
contrast, relies heavily on a very progressive income tax that doesn't fall on people who are paid off the books or who don't earn much money in the first place. Liberals who support immigration should rethink their love of progressive income taxes.

An imaginary exercise.

A Day Without an Illegal Immigrant
If legal immigrants stopped working for a day, we would miss the services of physicians, nurses, computer programmers, writers, actors, musicians, entrepreneurs of all stripes, and some airline pilots…as well as the CEO of Google. That would be more than an inconvenience, but it won’t happen because legal immigrants are not out marching angrily for rights that are already protected by our courts.

if illegal aliens all took the day off and were truly invisible for one day

• Hospital emergency rooms across the southwest would have about 20-percent fewer patients
• OBGYN wards in Denver would have 24-percent fewer deliveries and Los Angeles’s maternity-ward deliveries would drop by 40 percent and maternity billings to Medi-Cal would drop by 66 percent.
• Youth gangs would see their membership drop by 50 percent in many states, and in Phoenix, child-molestation cases would drop by 34 percent and auto theft by 40 percent
• Colorado taxpayers would save almost $3,000,000 in one day if illegals do not access any public services, because illegal aliens cost the state over $1 billion annually according to the best estimates.
• Colorado’s K-12 school classrooms would have 131,000 fewer students if illegal aliens and the children of illegals were to stay home, and Denver high schools’ dropout rate would once again approach the national norm.
• On a Day Without an Illegal Immigrant, thousands of workers and small contractors in the construction industry across Colorado would have their jobs back, the jobs given to illegal workers because they work for lower wages and no benefits. (On the other hand, if labor unions continue signing up illegal workers, no one will be worrying about Joe Six-Pack’s loss. Sorry, Joe, but you forgot to tell your union business agent that your job is as important as his is.)

—Tom Tancredo is a Republican congressman from Colorado.