Arizona Legislature Rejects Common Core Initiative for Tea Party Agenda

by Nomad

In a victory for the Arizona's Tea Party, the legislature has rejected the Common Core Standards Initiative. 

This nationwide program would have guaranteed that Arizona's high school students would be able to compete academically with students from any other state. Business leaders are warning that this decision would put students in the state at a disadvantage when seeking employment.

The Arizona legislature is, with argument, quickly becoming the nation's laughing stock. Only a week after approving of a bill to allow shop owners to discriminate against gay citizens under the name of religious freedom, lawmakers there have voted along party lines to drop out of the Common Core standards. Republicans voted 6-3 to bar Arizona from participating in the program.

The Common Core Initiative is a attempt to create a national educational standard, designed to prepare students with the information and skills they need to compete in the global economy. The initiative is sponsored by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and has been adopted by 45 states. Arizona approved of the changes four years ago.

Specifically, Common Core targets what K-12 students should know in English language arts and mathematics at the end of each grade. While educators and business leaders hailed the program as a step forward, Arizona lawmakers want none of it.

Oklahoma Lawmakers Find Money for Capitol Renovation but Not for Programs for Poor

by Nomad

When it comes to social programs for the needy, the Oklahoma lawmakers are all about cutting programs for the poor and lowering taxes. However, strangely, they have still managed to find enough money to refurbish and repair the ostentatious Capitol building. 

Journalist Dylan Goforth, writing for TulsaWorld, reports how lawmakers in Oklahoma are faced with a delicate situation: how to justify the renovation of the Capitol building while making deep cuts to programs for the poor. 
Already renovations to three floors on the Senate side totaled $3.3 million. That's just the beginning.

The entire project has drawn some criticism. The two sides received a total of $7 million at a time when numerous state agencies were requesting money.

Seven of two-story drapes, each costing over $2500, and shutters, costing $2000 each, totaled to more than $30,000. That's just the window treatments, mind you. Add to this two large screen television, two credenzas from which the televisions rise, a projector and a video screen. The article lists other expenses such as a full kitchen, complete with dishwasher, ice machine, refrigerator and new cabinets, cost $14,542. 
It all adds up quickly and that just the beginning. 

Lawmakers complain about the sewage that's seeping and mold that's stenching and the toilets that (someday soon) will not flush. While they all might agree that the Capitol building  is in a dreadful state, it looks pretty snazzy from the "before" photos. Not true, say staffers.

Electrical wiring in the building is so bad that there are sections where plainly visible cables are knotted together in a jumble. Some of the wiring remains from the building's early-20th-century days, staffers said.

It might lead you to think that nothing has been done since the ornate building of the pink and gray granite and white limestone was completed in 1917. 

That's not the case. 

In fact, work was done in 1998. But not renovation. In that year, the legislature funded the construction of a grandiose dome crowned with a 22-foot-tall bronze sculpture called The Guardian. The cost? $20.8 million. That dome was completed on November 16, 2002. Instead of a swanky dome, the $20 million could have easily paid for all of the cost for today's work.

Blind Man, Acquitted for Murder by Stand Your Ground Law, Demands Guns Back

by Nomad

Sometimes you hear some thing on the news that makes you think the world has gone nuts. Here's a story I saw from Nebraska news.

A judge at the Seminole County Courthouse in Nebraska ruled that, despite his reservations, the law was the law. After the acquittal of John Rogers in a deadly shooting, Rogers sued the court for the return of his weapon. Rogers, it should be mentioned, is legally blind. 

The weapons were confiscated by police after Rogers was arrested in the shooting death of 34-year old James Dewitt in March 2012. 

The judge saıd that in the end, it was the law and that justice was done.

Abigail Adams' Words of Warning about Respecting Women's Rights

by Nomad

I long to hear that you have declared independency. And in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors... If particular and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.

From a letter written in 1774 by Abigail Adams, wife of one president and mother of another to her husband. 

The Promise of Meta-materials: A Glimpse at the Future under Construction?

by Nomad

If one professor's vision is correct, then the future may hardly be recognizable. The development of meta-materials has been evolving more quickly that anybody could have expected.  

One thing is certain. The technology will give rise to completely new materials with extraordinary properties and  will change the nature of construction. 

And it's just around the corner.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum,  Dr. Julia R. Greer,  a professor of Materials Science and Mechanics at California Institute of Technology, spoke about very small things which will soon make very big changes to our world.

In her fast-paced lecture, Greer explained how, by using a combination of techniques, scientists of the near future will be able to create new materials- meta-materials- with mind-bending properties. Building materials, for example, which can be strong or stronger than steel and yet weigh one million times lighter. That's not a random number pulled out of a hat.

"Imagine a world where the next generation of planes are just as powerful and just as efficient but weigh as little as a toy airplane? Imagine a world where the total amount of material used to construct a bridge the size of the Golden Gate is small enough to hold in the palm of your hand? We believe we have found a way to bring that world closer to reality."

So how is it possible? In Greer's lecture, she explains the process in detail. The fabrication technique is actually a synthesis of technologies, namely, architectural design, material science and nanotechnology, all working an incredibly small scale. It's like playing God with a molecular-sized 3D printer.