Castle in the Sea: Homeschooling High School: Planning and the ...

It's not that turtles couldn't fly --? You might ask how, but you'd better ask why.

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?-- faux-distressed antique maxim, ?made up by me just now

Welcome to the inaugural Homeschooling High School Carnival (hosted today by Erin at Seven Little Australians), in which we attempt, in some coherent fashion, to answer the question of educational philosophy and how ours, such as it is, translates into what our high-schoolers do day in and day out, by way of the pursuit of knowledge. Or wisdom. Or how to make macaroni-and-cheese. Or whatever.

(I should add here, ?as useful context for those who haven't been reading this blog breathlessly every day for the last five years, that our family includes, just now, a homeschool graduate/college sophomore, a ninth-grader, and two primary-aged children.)

The first thing we -- or, for those of us who aren't Queen Victoria, I?-- have to ask myself, as I sit down to plan for a new school year, is What do I believe about education? What do I believe education is? What do I think it's for? OK, that's the first three things I have to ask myself, though it all amounts to the same question more or less: ?What is it all about? Where are we going in the end??

I have to have some answer to these questions before -- well, before anything. Otherwise, presented with a colorful spread of curriculum catalogs, a wall of books, a credit card, and an unwitting teenager who isn't mowing the lawn right now and therefore manifestly and urgently?needs something to do, I'll just buy it all. Everything. Here, kid. How about we do ninth grade three or four times over, according to as many methodologies, just to be on the safe side? What say you to a transcript with A HUNDRED AND FIVE high-school credits? So you'd be the only twenty-five-year-old at the prom. You'd be the most educated twenty-five-year-old at the prom, that's for sure.

?Hello? Hello? Why are you mowing the lawn? I wasn't through talking to you yet.?

Yeah. That would be me without a philosophy. My personal default setting would be: ?EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING! Shakespeare and quantum mechanics and an apprenticeship with the guy rebuilding our porch and joining the Battle of Ramseur's Mill re-enactment group and writing a novel and starting a newspaper and a total-immersion German course and an internship with the Centers for Disease Control -- ?and that's the first semester of ninth grade done.?

To save us from all that, before I do anything I have to ask myself: what do I believe about education? More to our point here, what do I believe constitutes an education for the student who is beginning, in a serious way, to approach the larger stage of adult life?

It's not that I haven't asked myself a million times before what I believe about education, and it's not that, with the passing of the years, my answers change all that much. Still I have to ask, so that as I sit down with the blank slate of the coming year before me, those answers flash freshly, in brilliant neon, on the twilight of the middle-aged mind.?

I say those answers, plural, because what I believe about education has more than one prong to it, more than one level, which makes sense, because learning itself has multiple prongs and levels -- which maybe is the first thing I believe.

What is education about, then? It's about academics for sure. We are an academic family. Not going to college is always an option, but not going to college because you weren't prepared to go to college is not. And whether you go to college or not, if you're a child in my house you will leave it as a culturally literate person who has heard of the Trojan War, Hadrian's Wall, the Sea-Geats, the Round Table, Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, the Reformation, the Reign of Terror, the Bill of Rights, the Emancipation Proclamation, the League of Nations -- in the context of history as an unfolding timeline, and of literature as history's imagination. You should also be able to do math, speak a foreign language (or read a classical one) and have at least the rudiments of a scientific mind, but more about that later.

?At the same time, education is also about character and virtue (which I think is as readily developed by the pursuit of knowledge as by anything else you might do). It's about academics and character but also life competency (which includes the pursuit of knowledge, as well as ironing and lawn-mowing and making your own breakfast). Ultimately, it's about the kind of person I wish to release from my house into the world at the end of four years, a person who is well-read and articulate, able to express himself in speaking and writing, a person who can reason, a person with some clue that his ideas didn't originate with him, a person who isn't powerless to help himself with the rudiments of daily life and time management, a person of self-discipline and at least nascent virtue: ?humble, patient, charitable, and the rest.

So here, more or less, is how I break things down in my mind, on my way to making actual plans:

I.?

It's been my longstanding joke that my #1 educational goal is to raise autodidacts who do their own laundry. So, here it is, #1: ?self-reliance. By this I don't mean the radical autonomy of the individual -- it's hard to be a radically autonomous individual who also lives in, and with, a family every day -- but rather habits and practices which emphasize self-motivation and confidence in the student's ability to learn, rather than being taught. ?I don't step back completely from my high-schooler's education, or say, when confronted with a frustrated teenager, "You'll just have to study until you figure it out." Nobody, after all, learns things in a vacuum; ?seeking help and knowing that you can find it is part of proactive learning. ?At the same time, I do try to set things up so that responsibility for reading and learning -- all the pursuit of knowledge stuff -- is the student's and not mine, because I, after all, have been there already. Having been there already, I'm here now to talk about books and experiences once they've been read and had, to listen and ask questions and probe and generally be a conversation partner. This vision shapes, in large part, the way my high-schoolers' education plays out day to day on a practical level, as you will see. (and yes, they do their own laundry!)?

II.

If one one level I believe education is a certain way of doing things -- the autodidact/laundry way -- which builds self-reliance and an earned sense of one's own competence, on another level I also believe that education is composed of certain things. Well, and who doesn't, right? I have yet to meet the educator who believed -- or would admit to believing -- that education is composed of nothing, though surely such a figure exists, at least in satire. But when most of us consider what we believe about education, we consider not only how we ought to accomplish it, but what exactly it is we want to accomplish. In other words, what content do we believe in? What do we want our children to leave home knowing? What are our non-negotiables?

My hierarchy of must-have literacies goes roughly like this:

1. The Catholic faith, as practiced daily (read: ?Mass, Confession, Adoration, private prayer, pursuit of knowledge about the faith) in the context of the student life. What my kids believe at the end of the day is the one thing over which I have virtually zero control -- God gave them free will, and it's not within my power, or my desire, to tamper with that. But I can provide a daily routine in which the faith is lived, and I can practice my own faith alongside my children, not as an example so much as a companion on the road.

2. Knowledge of where we come from as a culture, why we think and speak and behave as we do, what lineages our ideas claim. This is why I place such a premium not only on the study of history, but on the chronological study of literature which is the imagination of a culture and an era, and why we do history and literature as an integrated study over the course of four years: ancient and classical in grade 9, medieval and Renaissance, with an emphasis on English literature, in grade 10, post-Renaissance and New World, with an emphasis on America, in grade 11, and in grade 12, a semester survey of philosophy and literature, covering some of the same ground as previous years but with more focus and challenging readings, plus seminars in poetry and the novel.

I emphasize all of this in high school 1) because these are the things you have to read and know to be a literate biologist, or a literate anything else; 2) because all of these things serve, ultimately, the Good, the Beautiful, and the True; ?and 3) because there's no guarantee any more that a college education will cover this body of knowledge. For the cultural patrimony of Western Civilization, it's now or never. Or so I feel. To the extent of being a little deranged about it all. (you'll see just how deranged when I host the High-School Homeschool Humanities Carnival some months hence)

3. Uh . . . everything else. This would include math, science, language, electives . . . everything you'd study first, of course, because it does good things for your mind and your character to study it, but also because it's what people in high school study in order to produce transcripts that aren't blank, because colleges frown on blank transcripts (see prepared for college, above). Actually, I have a high-schooler right now who's mathy and sciency far beyond the boundaries of my paltry abilities; ?all I can do for him is to give him the tools to learn what he needs and wants to learn, and outsource wherever possible. My own limitations shouldn't limit any other person in my house, and here I do what I can to fling the doors wide. Here, too, for obvious reasons, the self-sufficiency thing comes into play. There are things I can help with, and things I really can't, beyond pointing a person in the direction of help.

4. And then everything else: ?Scouts, altar serving, sports, chores, hobbies and pastimes, some of which bleeds over into school. It's hard to know sometimes where to draw the line between curriculum and extracurricular.

All of this, then, drives the plans I make, which I've posted, or posted about, already: ?here, here, here, and here. Our plans explain, pretty much, what we do every day, which is . . . on my part, not much.

Here's how a typical day goes:

The 9th grader gets up around 6 to run and bike, because he's training for a triathlon. After he's showered and had breakfast, he then goes to his room to do his work, which generally lasts until fairly late in the afternoon, depending on how long he runs and bikes and when he settles down to school. Three mornings a week, he runs and bikes really, really early, then goes in to work with his father the professor, so that he can attend biology class and lab, then do the rest of his work in the 3rd floor science resource library, where he's staked out territory. Apparently none of the college students have been desperate enough for quiet yet to venture up there. Before he and his father come home, they go to Mass together on campus. On the afternoons when he's not at the college, currently he's working on his Eagle Scout project, which is to interview local World War II veterans for a recorded oral history, to be archived by our county historical association.

As you can see if you check out my lesson-plan links above, I've put some time (like my whole summer) into typing up reasonably detailed syllabi in an easy-to-read modified grid format (thank you, Donna Young), which I email weekly -- each week's plans are a separate file -- to my 9th grader, who works from the plans. I plan weekly, so that written work is due on Fridays, but he is free to structure his own daily time. Generally, being the methodical sort, he opts to spend an hour a day on each subject, but he could as easily do Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes and Tuesday-Thursday ones, or he could opt to spend an entire day doing, say, all of his history for the week, and be done with it. The only thing that really has to be done daily is algebra (well, he's also doing German, and that requires daily practice as well). Right now, too, he's taking a college class three days a week, which provides a useful shape to things. ?Most of his literature readings are e-texts, for which I've provided him with links: ?fewer books to lose as he's plodding back and forth between home and campus. With his weekly literature assignment I include a reading-journal prompt, composed of questions which the discerning reader would naturally ask as he read (sometimes the discerning reader doesn't know how discerning he is, and has to be nudged a little in the right direction).

Otherwise, I choose materials which are as self-teaching as possible: ?algebra with a DVD or CD-ROM component, grammar and composition with self-explanatory exercises, interactive online German, a set of Great Courses lectures on CD to accompany his history reading. ?If he has questions, he asks. Several times during the week, I strike up a conversation with him about what he's reading and writing. He goes off to the college campus with his professor father to attend his biology class (see outsourcing, above), and they talk on the way home, sometimes in German. At the end of the week, he shows me written work, but essentially I trust him to get on with it, as if he already were the adult he's in the process of becoming, and as if the learning were his personal project to get on with. As indeed it is.

Because he has some fairly ambitious goals in mind and has demonstrably been very serious about pursuing them, it's easy to trust him. ?I realize I'm not describing every kid in the world -- I'm not even describing every kid in my house. And I guess that's the other part of the process of distilling philosophy into everyday action: ?knowing who it is you're dealing with and just how far, exactly, your philosophy meshes with the reality of that person. My first child at this age would not have been quite as ?successfully autonomous, though by her senior year this was our M.O., and as a warm-up for the demands of college, the autodidact approach has proved to be a good one. She has actually thanked me, as in, Thank you, Mom, for making me read The Iliad in 9th grade; ?she's also remarked more than once that she's grateful to have had the opportunity to develop self-direction and time-management skills before she got to college.

Have I been philosophical here? To be honest, I'm not sure -- I haven't, after all, talked about any of the major schools of educational philosophy to which homeschooling families tend to subscribe: ?no Charlotte Mason, no classical, no unschooling. I don't know what to call what we do, but so far it seems to work for us.

P.S.: ?I should add that my high-schoolers have always been involved in the planning for each year of work -- it's their work, after all. The history/literature business is non-negotiable, but we do talk about it, and I keep the person in mind as I'm making decisions about what readings, exactly, will end up on the syllabus. We bat math, foreign-language, science, and elective ideas back and forth and discuss what courses, if any, might be available to take on campus. I want my high-schooler invested in the process, and although everything he has to do doesn't make him turn cartwheels of delight, I want there to be things on his weekly schedule that he's actively excited about.

Most importantly, though, early on, we talk about where that person might see himself or herself at the end of four years. My first child was tremendously motivated, at 12 or 13, by researching colleges and imagining in what environment she might like to find herself one day. Her vision changed significantly in the course of her high-school years, but fortunately college admissions requirements don't change all that much from school to school, so the initial idea she had of what hoops she'd have to jump through remained useful, even as she discovered unforeseen academic interests in the course of her high-school years. She's wound up doing something completely different from what she initially envisioned herself doing, but that early vision was a step on the way to where she is now.

My second child, as I've said, has some fairly ambitious goals, which he's entertained since he was nine or ten. Those goals may change, but until something else replaces them (as may or may not happen), they serve as a driving force for self-discipline and a desire to work hard. I tend to think, actually, that in and of itself the vision of being out of the house in the foreseeable future is a powerful motivator for many teenagers. Mine have been very happy to be home educated and, so far, have not at all wanted to go to brick-and-mortar school, but the idea of being somewhere else doing something else at the end of these four years is a potent one. A lot of our mutual planning conversation turns on that idea.?

Source: http://fineoldfamly.blogspot.com/2012/09/homeschooling-high-school-planning-and.html

martina navratilova high school shooting daytona 500 national pancake day ohio school shooting sean young arrested matt kenseth

Rev. Sun Myung Moon, known for mass weddings, dies

FILE - In this Oct. 14, 1982 file photo, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, left, and his wife Hak Ja Han, are shown during the traditional invocation of a blessing at a mass wedding in Seoul?s Chamsil gymnasium where 6,000 couples from about 80 countries were married. Moon, self-proclaimed messiah who founded Unification Church, died at age 92 Monday, Sept. 3, 2012, church officials said. (AP Photo/File)

FILE - In this Oct. 14, 1982 file photo, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, left, and his wife Hak Ja Han, are shown during the traditional invocation of a blessing at a mass wedding in Seoul?s Chamsil gymnasium where 6,000 couples from about 80 countries were married. Moon, self-proclaimed messiah who founded Unification Church, died at age 92 Monday, Sept. 3, 2012, church officials said. (AP Photo/File)

FILE - In this Saturday, June 25, 2005 file photo, Unification Church leader Rev. Sun Myung Moon speaks during his "Now is God's Time" rally in New York. Moon, self-proclaimed messiah who founded Unification Church, has died at age 92 church officials said Monday, Sept. 3, 2012. (AP Photo/John Marshall Mantel)

FILE - In this Saturday, Nov. 29, 1997 file photo, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, center left, and his wife Hak Ja Han Moon officiate a mass wedding ceremony during at RFK Stadium in Washington. Moon, self-proclaimed messiah who founded the Unification Church, has died at age 92 church officials said Monday, Sept. 3, 2012. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

In this photo distributed on Dec. 7, 1991, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, left, toasts with North Korean founder Kim Il Sung in North Korea. Moon, the self-proclaimed messiah who founded the Unification Church, died Monday, Sept. 3, 2012 at a church-owned hospital near his home in Gapyeong County, northeast of Seoul, church officials said. He was 92. (AP Photo/Yonhap) KOREA OUT

FILE - In this Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2009 file photo, Rev. Sun Myung Moon speaks during a mass wedding ceremony arranged by the church at Sun Moon University in Asan, South Korea. Rev. Moon, self-proclaimed messiah who founded the Unification Church, has died at age 92 church officials said Monday, Sept. 3, 2012. (AP Photo/ Lee Jin-man)

(AP) ? The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, best known for conducting mass weddings involving thousands of couples, was a self-proclaimed messiah, but he was at least as good at attracting dollars as he was at drawing converts.

His Unification Church claims 3 million followers, though ex-members and critics put the number at no more than 100,000. There is no questioning the vastness of the business empire Moon created through his church: ventures in several countries from hospitals and newspapers to cars and sushi, and even professional sports teams and a ballet troupe.

Moon died Monday at a church-owned hospital near his home in Gapyeong County, northeast of Seoul, two weeks after being hospitalized with pneumonia, Unification Church spokesman Ahn Ho-yeul told The Associated Press. Moon's wife and children were at his side, Ahn said. He was 92.

Flags flew at half-staff Monday at a Unification Church in Seoul. Followers trickled into the building, some wiping away tears. One woman bowed and cried before a copy of the church-owned Segye Times newspaper, which was placed on a table and had a large picture of Moon on its front page. Another woman bowed before a small statue of Moon and his wife.

"I am devastated," Bo Hi Pak, chairman of the Unification Church-supported Korean Cultural Foundation, said outside the hospital where Moon had been cared for. "I cannot control my emotions and focus on my work due to the sadness of losing a father."

Moon's body was transferred to the church's gargantuan white palace on Mount Cheonseong overlooking the lakes and wooded forests of Gapyeong County. His funeral will take place Sept. 15 after a 13-day mourning period, with a massive new sports and cultural center built recently on the church's sprawling campus accepting mourners starting Thursday, the church said in a statement. Moon is to be buried on Mount Cheonseong.

The mourning period is not only more than the usual three to five days in South Korea, but longer than the mourning periods for late South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. It was in keeping with Moon's grandiose life, in which he encouraged followers to call him and his wife "True Parents."

Moon, who was born in a rural part of what is now North Korea, founded his Bible-based religion in Seoul in 1954, a year after the end of the Korean War. He cultivated friends among political leaders in the U.S. and ? though he was an ardent anti-communist ? in North Korea, though he served time in prison in both countries.

He gained notoriety by marrying off thousands of followers in mass wedding ceremonies, usually not long after being arranged to marry by Moon himself. Moon often paired up strangers hailing from different countries as part of his vision of a multicultural, family-oriented religious world.

The church has faced considerable controversy over the years, and has been accused of using devious recruitment tactics and duping followers out of money. Parents of young followers in the United States and elsewhere expressed worries that their children were brainwashed into joining.

The church rebuffs the allegations, saying many new religious movements faced similar accusations in their early years. Moon's followers were often called "Moonies," a term many found pejorative.

The Unification Church claims 3 million followers, including 100,000 in the U.S., and says it has sent missionaries to 194 countries, according to Ahn.

Richard Panzer, president of the Unification Theological Seminary in Barrytown, N.Y., said Moon's legacy will live on.

"We believe that Reverend Moon was a historical figure in the history of religion," he said. "And that he made an enormous contribution to understanding of the suffering heart of God and a lot of contributions toward world peace."

The seminary, established by Moon in 1975, is an interfaith institution with Buddhist, Christian and Muslim professors, Panzer said.

The church also quietly amassed lucrative business ventures over the years, including the Washington Times newspaper; the New Yorker Hotel, a midtown Manhattan art deco landmark; and a seafood distribution firm that supplies sushi to Japanese restaurants across the U.S. It gave the University of Bridgeport $110 million over more than a decade to keep the Connecticut school operating.

In South Korea, it acquired a ski resort, professional football teams, schools, hospitals and other businesses. It also operates the Potonggang Hotel in Pyongyang, jointly operates the North Korean automaker and has a huge "peace" institute in the North Korean capital.

Moon had hoped to help bring about the reunification of Korea during his lifetime.

Moon was born in 1920 in North Phyongan Province at a time when Pyongyang was known as a center for Korea's Christians. He said he was 16 when Jesus Christ first appeared to him and told him to finish the work he had begun on Earth 2,000 years earlier.

Christianity fell out of favor after the Korean Peninsula was divided into the communist North and the U.S.-backed South in 1945, and while preaching, Moon was imprisoned in the late 1940s by North Korean authorities and accused of spying for South Korea, an allegation he denied.

When the Korean War broke out in 1950, he went to South Korea. After leaving his North Korean wife, he married Hak Ja Han Moon in 1960.

In South Korea, Moon quickly drew young acolytes to his conservative, family-oriented value system and unusual interpretation of the Bible. The church's doctrine is a mixture of Christian, Confucian and traditional Korean values.

Moon conducted his first mass wedding in Seoul in the early 1960s, and the "blessing ceremonies" grew in scale over the years. A 1982 wedding at New York's Madison Square Garden ? the first outside South Korea ? drew thousands of participants.

"International and intercultural marriages are the quickest way to bring about an ideal world of peace," Moon said in a 2009 autobiography. "People should marry across national and cultural boundaries with people from countries they consider to be their enemies so that the world of peace can come that much more quickly."

Moon began rebuilding his relationship with North Korea in 1991, meeting with the country's founder, Kim Il Sung, in the eastern industrial city of Hamhung. In his autobiography, Moon said he urged Kim to give up his nuclear ambitions, and said Kim responded by saying that his atomic program was for peaceful purposes and he had no intention to use it to "kill my own people."

"The two of us were able to communicate well about our shared hobbies of hunting and fishing," Moon wrote. "At one point, we each felt we had so much to say to the other that we just started talking like old friends meeting after a long separation."

When Kim died in 1994, Moon sent a condolence delegation to North Korea, drawing criticism from conservatives at home. The late Kim Jong Il, who succeeded his father as North Korean leader, sent roses, prized wild ginseng, Rolex watches and other gifts to Moon on his birthday each year. Moon said Kim Il Sung had instructed Kim Jong Il that "after I die, if there are things to discuss pertaining to North-South relations, you must always seek the advice of President Moon."

The church also sent a delegation to Pyongyang after Kim Jong Il died in December and was succeeded by his son Kim Jong Un.

Moon also developed a good relationship with conservative American leaders such as former Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Yet he also served 13 months at a U.S. federal prison in the mid-1980s after a New York City jury convicted him of filing false tax returns. The church says the U.S. government persecuted Moon because of his growing influence and popularity with young Americans.

One of the more bizarre chapters in Moon's relationship with Washington came in 2004, when more than a dozen U.S. lawmakers attended a "coronation ceremony" for Moon and his wife in which Moon declared himself humanity's savior and said his teachings have helped Hitler and Stalin be "reborn as new persons." Some of the congressmen later said they had been misled and hadn't been aware that Moon would be at the event.

In later years, the church adopted a lower profile in the United States and focused on building its businesses. Moon lived for more than 30 years in the United States, the church said.

In recent years, Moon handed over day-to-day control of the empire to his children. In 2008, at age 88, he was in a helicopter crash near Seoul but suffered only minor injuries.

Still, in 2009 he presided over a wedding ceremony for 45,000 people marrying for the first time or renewing their vows ? one of his last huge mass weddings.

Moon and his wife have 10 surviving sons and daughters, according to the church.

There are reports of a rift within the family. One of Moon's sons reportedly sued his mother in 2011 demanding the return of more than $22 million allegedly sent without his consent from a company he runs to his mother's missionary group. A court ruled that the money was a loan but ordered it returned, the Yonhap news agency reported.

Another son committed suicide in 1999, plunging to his death from the 17th floor from a Reno, Nevada, hotel, officials said. Two other sons reportedly also died early, one in a train wreck and another in a car accident.

At the time of the car accident, the son was engaged to marry the prima ballerina daughter of Bo Hi Pak, the head of the church's Korean Cultural Foundation. The wedding, dubbed a "spiritual" marriage, went ahead as planned even after his death and the daughter-in-law, Julia Moon, is a prominent figure in South Korea's arts scene.

Moon's U.S.-born youngest son, the Rev. Hyung-jin Moon, was named the church's top religious director in April 2008. Other children run the church's businesses and charitable activities.

Hyung-jin Moon told The Associated Press in February 2010 that his father's offspring do not see themselves as his successors.

"Our role is not inheriting that messianic role," he said. "Our role is more of the apostles ... where we become the bridge between understanding what kind of lives (our) two parents have lived."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-09-03-AS-SKorea-Obit-Moon/id-a57db3ab72734cc0a3b708ffb542d18d

ron paul money bomb bon vivant zynga ipo zynga ipo sam hurd arrested roddy white roddy white

How do I calculate my credit card finance charge? | Daily News

I have $1,145 dollars on the card with an interest rate of 8.9%. What is the formula to calculate what my finance charge would be on that month? I am horrible at math, when I did it it came out to around $90 and if that is right then I will just take the money out of savings and pay it all off.

Source: http://dailynewsdir.com/how-do-i-calculate-my-credit-card-finance-charge/

loretta lynn gene kelly zoe saldana zooey deschanel and joseph gordon levitt debra messing ayaan hirsi ali rachel uchitel

Late-night shows mock Eastwood's empty chair

Reuters file

Clint Eastwood's discussion with an empty chair thrilled late-night talk-show hosts.

By Craig Berman, NBC News contributor

Clint Eastwood is a Hollywood legend, but not all of his movies were smash hits. He?s no stranger to getting poor reviews.

But he may never have received worse?reviews?than the ones he?s hearing from late-night talk-show hosts?after his performance at the Republican National Convention on Thursday night, where he spent quality time on national television in spirited debate with a figment of his imagination.

?Amidst the tired rhetoric, empty platitudes and overwrought attacks, a fistful of awesome emerged in the night ? where it spent 12 minutes on the most important night of Mitt Romney?s life yelling at a chair,? Jon Stewart said on ?The Daily Show.?

Much to the Romney campaign?s dismay (and to Sen. Marco Rubio, who might have otherwise?earned headlines for his introduction of the nominee), Eastwood?s argument with an invisible man was the story of the day.

?I don?t care how many Marco Rubios you put in between Clint Eastwood and Mitt Romney, Romney ain?t outshining this playlet I call The Old Man and the Seat,? Stewart said.

And to the ?Daily Show? host, it explained a lot.

?We owe Clint Eastwood a debt of thanks, not only because it was a truly hilarious 12 minutes of improvised awesome in a week of scripted blah, but because it advanced our understanding,? Stewart said. ?This president has issues, and there are very legitimate debates to be had about his policy and actions and successes and/or failures -? I mean, tune in next week ?- but I could never wrap my head as to why the world and the president that Republicans describe bears so little resemblance to the world and experience that I experience.

?And now I know why. There is a President Obama that only Republicans can see.??

Steven Colbert went so far as to bring on a chair of his own to debate on the ?Colbert Report.? This invisible foe was more convincing than the one Eastwood debated, as it had the house spouting Democratic slogans by the time the skit ended. So at least he showed the RNC that it could have been worse.

Colbert also had to go back in time for something comparable, arguing ?there has not been a political speech this powerful since the famous Lincoln-Bookshelf debates.? And he and guest James Carville differed on the impact the convention would have on the polls, with Carville predicting a 2-3 point increase.

?The Romney people are privately predicting 11,? Colbert said

?The Romney people put Clint Eastwood out there,? Carville replied.

Jay Leno was no kinder.

?Wasn?t that bizarre? The only time I ever talked to an empty chair is when we had Paris Hilton on the show,? he said on his ?Tonight Show? monologue.

Leno also speculated, ?Clint Eastwood said he got the idea earlier in the day when he saw John McCain talking to an empty chaise lounge at the hotel pool.? But McCain?s running mate looked better by comparison.

?Be honest. After watching Clint Eastwood last night, Sarah Palin isn?t looking so bad, is she?? Leno said.

Related content:

Source: http://entertainment.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/01/13613969-late-night-talk-shows-cant-get-enough-of-mocking-clint-eastwoods-empty-chair?lite

apple juice occupy la miranda kerr adriana lima victoria secret angels fox 4 fox 4

19% of New Jersey voters have tattoos, poll finds

Pauly D of MTV's "Jersey Shore" (MTV)

Nearly 20 percent of New Jersey's registered voters have at least one tattoo, a new poll conducted by Rutgers University ahead of the final season of MTV's "Jersey Shore" finds.

According to the Rutgers-Eagleton Institute poll, 19 percent of nearly 1,000 registered voters in the state said they have at least one tattoo. And 37 percent of so-called millennials born after 1980 are inked.

Of those without tattoos, just 8 percent plan to get one, the study found. And while 75 percent say their opinion of others is not affected by body art, nearly a quarter "say they think worse of people with tattoos."

The disdain for body art steadily increases with age:

30 percent of those 65 and older think worse of tattooed people, versus only 8 percent of millennials. Those with high levels of education and income also are more likely to negatively judge tattoos; college graduates (26 percent) and those with graduate work (27 percent) are about 10 points more likely to think worse of body art wearers. The tattooless in the highest income bracket (32 percent) are 12 to 13 points more likely to think this way than any other income level.

According to the poll, President Obama leads Mitt Romney among New Jersey's tattooed registered voters. Fourteen percent of Garden State voters who say they're voting for Romney have tattoos, compared to 22 percent for Obama.

[Related: Nokia issues patent for vibrating tattoos]

And despite the prevalence of tattoos on the MTV reality series, the pollsters concluded that most of the ink seen at the Jersey Shore itself is on visitors, not natives. Among shore residents, just 18 percent--marginally less than the overall figure--are inked.

"We suspect that a large share of the tattoos you see on beachgoers are on summer visitors," David Redlawsk, poll director and political science professor at Rutgers University, wrote in a blog post announcing the results. "'Jersey Shore' doesn't represent the real thing, Pauly D's tattoos notwithstanding."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/jersey-tattoos-study-voters-210120476.html

santorum wins iowa archer ibooks 2 ifl indoor football league newt gingrich wife callista

Angola's Dos Santos secures big election win

LUANDA (Reuters) - Angola's long-serving President Jose Eduardo dos Santos and his MPLA party scored a landslide win on Saturday in an election criticized as one-sided and not credible by opponents and civil society activists, according to provisional results.

The results from Friday's voting announced by the National Elections Commission showed the governing party with 74 percent of the vote - far ahead of its nearest rivals with votes counted from over 70 percent of polling stations.

Under a new constitution introduced in 2010, the MPLA win means Dos Santos, who turned 70 this week, is elected for a further five-year term on top of the nearly 33 years he has already served as leader of Africa's No. 2 oil producer.

Angola's seaside capital was calm and there were no signs of any celebration or uproar in the streets, which indicated the overwhelming MPLA victory in only the third election since independence from Portugal in 1975 was widely anticipated.

Silver-haired Dos Santos is Africa's second longest serving leader after Equatorial Guinea's President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

The provisional results gave the MPLA's closest challenger, former rebel group UNITA, nearly 18 percent, while the third-placed CASA-CE party was approaching five percent in its first election test after being formed by UNITA dissident Abel Chivukuvuku four months ago.

Chivukuvuku told reporters his party, which along with UNITA had complained repeatedly of serious irregularities in the vote preparations and the electoral process, was analyzing the results before deciding whether to accept or reject them.

But another prominent CASA-CE member, candidate for Luanda William Tonet, dismissed the provisional results as "cheating taken to its maximum level".

"This is like a declaration of war by the MPLA ... it indicates to citizens that there can be no alternative through the electoral route," he told Reuters.

Sources at UNITA said party president Isaias Samakuva would challenge the announced results.

PEACEFUL VOTE

Friday's vote passed smoothly and without any serious incidents, according to officials and election observers.

As they cast their ballots, many citizens called however for better power, water, health and education services and a more equal share-out of the country's oil wealth.

It was the second election since the end a decade ago of a 27-year civil war in which Dos Santos' MPLA emerged victorious over UNITA. The MPLA then crushed its rival politically by obtaining 82 percent of the vote in the last 2008 elections.

An oil boom fuelled rapid growth averaging 15 percent a year between 2002 and 2008 and prospects for national economic growth remain buoyant, but distribution of this wealth among Angola's 18 million people has been very unequal.

Thrusting new buildings and construction cranes punctuate the bayside skyline of the seaside capital Luanda, but sprawling poor slums known as "musseques" fringe the overcrowded city.

Dos Santos had campaigned on a platform portraying him as a guarantor of peace combined with a pledge to spread the country's riches more evenly and widely among the population.

One of Angola's leading civil society activists, Elias Isaac, Angola country director for the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA), a pro-democracy NGO, said the results showing an easy MPLA win came as no surprise.

He criticized the fact that ballot tally sheets from the more than 10,000 polling stations across the country were not being posted publicly at the voting centers themselves but were being announced centrally by the electoral authorities.

"There is no transparency ... there is no credibility in the process," Isaac told Reuters.

GROUNDSWELL OF DISCONTENT

MPLA officials hailed the initial results as a confirmation of the ruling party's enduring support in a rapidly-growing oil producer that still bears the scars of the long civil war in damaged buildings and the mutilated limbs of landmine victims.

"These results show that the MPLA continues to be the party of the people and that we obtained a majority that will allow us to keep on growing the country in stability," MPLA spokesman Rui Falcao told Reuters.

But the month of campaigning had revealed a significant groundswell of discontent among ordinary Angolans unhappy about the unequal distribution of their country's oil wealth.

"President dos Santos and the MPLA are aware that increasing numbers of Angolans expect their government to provide better services, jobs and prosperity," said Alex Vines, an expert on Angola at London-based think tank Chatham House.

"This will remain a major challenge for the government, that suffers from systemic inefficiencies and a limited pool of skilled people to draw upon," he added.

Opponents and civil society critics say Dos Santos has created a "one-person state" marked by rampant corruption and conspicuous enrichment of a small elite, including his family.

"The country is not going to change ... we will still be in a system that is controlled by one man," OSISA's Isaac said.

The MPLA's monolithic hold on the state, oil revenues and most local media gave it clear campaign advantages over UNITA, CASA-CE and six other smaller coalitions and parties that fielded candidates.

The MPLA's dominance reflects Dos Santos' more than three decades in power during which the reserved Soviet-trained oil engineer, with military help from Cuba and the Soviet Union, survived Cold War offensives by South African apartheid forces and defeated first the FNLA and then UNITA in the civil war.

"These elections finally allow him to claim a democratic mandate, but he knows that having served as President since 1979, pressure is growing on him to retire," Vines said.

"Succession will remain one of the greatest uncertainties over the next few years," he added.

(Reporting by Pascal Fletcher and Shrikesh Laxmidas; Editing by Jon Hemming)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/angolas-ruling-mpla-party-headed-vote-win-commission-142526373.html

spring forward day light savings day light savings daylight saving time 2012 grapes of wrath silent house nfl mock draft

Heidi Klum slams Seal's cheating accusations

Aby Baker / Getty Images

By Access Hollywood

Heidi Klum has spoken out regarding comments made by her soon-to-be ex-husband, Seal, which claimed the supermodel mom had a relationship with her bodyguard prior to her and Seal?s separation.

?It is sad that Seal has to resort to false accusations,? a rep for Heidi told Access Hollywood on Saturday in response to the ?Kiss from a Rose? singer?s claim that Heidi had an affair with her bodyguard of four years, Martin Kristen.

VIEW THE PHOTOS: Heidi Klum: From Supermodel To Super Mom

On Friday, Seal was asked by reporters what he thought of his ex?s rumored new relationship with Martin after photographers captured the ?Project Runway? host with her arm around the bodyguard during a family vacation in Italy last week.

?To be quite honest, if there is going to be somebody else in [my children?s] lives, I?d much rather it was a familiar face,? Seal told TMZ, when asked about Heidi?s possible involvement with Martin. ?I guess the only thing I would have preferred is that ? I guess I didn?t expect any better from him, I would have preferred Heidi show a little bit more class, and at least wait until we separated first before deciding to fornicate with the help, as it were.?

VIEW THE PHOTOS: Hollywood?s Hottest Moms & Their Loveable Little Ones

Adding, ?But I guess you now all have the answer that you?ve been looking for for the past seven months.?

Heidi and Seal announced their separation in January after seven years of marriage.

VIEW THE PHOTOS: Heidi Klum & Seal In Happier Times

The former couple has four children together ? Leni, 8, Henry, 6, Johan, 5, and Lou, 2.

Source: http://todayentertainment.today.com/_news/2012/09/01/13613730-heidi-klum-slams-seals-false-cheating-accusations?lite

skier sarah burke gingrich wife cheryl burke sarah burke mega upload santorum wins iowa archer

Suarez helps Liverpool edge past Hearts

Luis Suarez's late goal sent Liverpool into the Europa League group stage as the Reds drew 1-1 with Hearts at Anfield on Thursday to clinch a 2-1 aggregate success.

Brendan Rodgers' team had a 1-0 advantage from last week's first leg at Tynecastle and despite dominating for long periods at Anfield, they out just scraped past the Scottish Premier League outfit.

David Templeton looked set to make Liverpool pay for their wastefulness when his weak shot was allowed into the net by Pepe Reina with five minutes left.

But three minutes later Suarez burst away down the left and managed to find the net from close-range to secure Liverpool's place in the group stages of Europe's second tier competition.

It was an unnecessarily nervous end to the evening for a Liverpool side that had plenty of chances to see off the Edinburgh club.

Rodgers, who has allowed Andy Carroll to join West Ham on a season-long loan, can also be forgiven for having half an eye on the 24 hours ahead.

The Liverpool manager could see Charlie Adam and Jay Spearing leave and is be keen to add new faces ahead of Friday's 2200GMT deadline.

Hearts began brightly and Callum Paterson hit a half volley that landed just wide and had another effort blocked by a team-mate.

Suarez immediately carried a threat and after swapping passes with Martin Kelly, he had a low effort pushed away by Hearts goalkeeper Jamie Macdonald.

Stewart Downing has endured plenty of criticism during his time at Anfield but he showed great skill to beat Paterson with ease and send over a cross that was flicked on by youngster Adam Morgan and headed towards goal by Suarez, only for Marius Zaliukas to clear off the line.

John Sutton went down in the area under Jamie Carragher's challenge with the visitors appealing for a penalty, before Liverpool's Joe Allen broke forward and had a long-range effort held by Macdonald.

The Hearts goalkeeper also did well to rush out to block after Steven Gerrard had burst through two challenges into the area.

Sutton also glanced a header wide from a whipped cross from Templeton and Morgan wasted a decent opening after he was played through by Gerrard after a quick break.

After the break, Gerrard picked out Martin Skrtel at the near post but the Slovakian defender's effort was turned wide by Andy Webster.

And Jonjo Shelvey thumped another effort from 25 yards just past the top corner as the hosts continued to press.

Suarez then passed up two opportunities to kill the tie. The Uruguayan was sent through by Jordan Henderson and had his close-range effort blocked on to the post by Ryan McGowan.

A minute later he spun 10 yards from goal and curled a shot past the far post.

Raheem Sterling, who had replaced Morgan just after the hour, made an immediate impression and just missed after an beating several defenders and Gerrard also hit a bending shot narrowly wide midway through the second half.

Hearts went close again through Mehdi Taouil and Daniel Grainger also had a free-kick deflected wide by the wall.

The Scottish side pulled the tie level in the 85th minute when Reina allowed a routine shot from Templeton to squirm through his body and into the net.

But, with extra-time looming, Suarez broke clear down the left and managed to squeeze a shot inside the near post in the 88th minute.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/suarez-helps-liverpool-edge-past-hearts-212259310--sow.html

tyler perry whitney houston r kelly r. kelly macular degeneration whitney houston funeral judi dench alicia keys

Stocks rally as investors look to the Fed

Brendan Mcdermid / REUTERS

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

By NBC News wire services

Updated at 10:55 a.m. ET: Stocks were higher Friday as investors stepped back into equities and examined a key speech by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

The Dow Jones industrial average was lately up over 130 points.

Bernanke, addressing a symposium of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, said the Fed can do more to help the economy, but did not say the Fed is actively considering any specific plan to help the market, such as a round of bond purchases to lower long-term interest rates.

World markets have been on edge for weeks waiting to hear what Bernanke will say in Wyoming.

Trading was thin this week and lacking dramatic price moves, though investors decisively took profits on Thursday. Stocks dropped solidly, with the Nasdaq down more than 1 percent and the S&P closing below 1,400 for the first time since August 6.

Despite Friday?s gains, equities look to end the week little changed.

Markets have advanced in recent months, buoyed by expectations for more help from the Fed. Thursday's retreat could indicate that the market is now less vulnerable for a selloff, though financial market participants were cautious ahead of the Fed speech. St. Louis Fed President James Bullard told Bloomberg TV that policymakers should wait and consider more economic data before making any big policy moves.

Investors are also looking ahead to a meeting of the European Central Bank next Thursday that is expected to take pressure off highly indebted countries. Comments from European Central Bank Executive Board member Benoit Coeure rekindled expectations for central bank action.

Sectors tied to the pace of economic growth, including energy and financials, are likely to be impacted the most by Bernanke's remarks. Defensive groups like utilities or health care may have a more muted reaction.

In the week to date, the S&P has dropped 0.8 percent, though the index barely budged over the first three sessions of the week - declining just 0.05 percent. The Dow is down 1.2 percent for the week and the Nasdaq is off 0.7 percent.

Turnover has been paltry, with this week's four days so far being among the five lowest in terms of volume this year.

Economic data over the past two weeks has been a little stronger than expected, and Reuters polls show investors and economists are more skeptical that the Fed will announce a new round of bond buying at its September meeting.

In company news, Google Inc Chief Executive Larry Page and Apple CEO Tim Cook have been conducting behind-the-scenes talks about a range of intellectual property matters, including the mobile patent disputes between the companies, people familiar with the matter said.

Science Applications International Corp said late Thursday it plans to split into two independently traded companies to bid for more contracts which they cannot do now due to conflict-of-interest regulations.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Source: http://marketday.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/31/13589656-stocks-rally-as-investors-monitor-fed-chiefs-speech?lite

rick santorum ozzie guillen castro comments phish gluten free diet barry zito mac virus santorum drops out

Math ability requires crosstalk in the brain

ScienceDaily (Aug. 29, 2012) ? A new study by researchers at UT Dallas' Center for Vital Longevity, Duke University, and the University of Michigan has found that the strength of communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain predicts performance on basic arithmetic problems. The findings shed light on the neural basis of human math abilities and suggest a possible route to aiding those who suffer from dyscalculia-- an inability to understand and manipulate numbers.

It has been known for some time that the parietal cortex, the top/middle region of the brain, plays a central role in so-called numerical cognition--our ability to process numerical information. Previous brain imaging studies have shown that the right parietal region is primarily involved in basic quantity processing (like gauging relative amounts of fruit in baskets), while the left parietal region is involved in more precise numerical operations like addition and subtraction. What has not been known is whether the two hemispheres can work together to improve math performance. The new study demonstrates that they can. The findings were recently published online in Cerebral Cortex.

In the study, conducted in Dallas and led by Dr. Joonkoo Park, now a postdoctoral fellow at Duke University, researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to measure the brain activity of 27 healthy young adults while they performed simple numerical and arithmetic tasks. In one task, participants were asked to judge whether two groups of shapes contained the same or different numbers of items. In two other tasks, participants were asked to solve simple addition and subtraction problems.

Consistent with previous studies, the researchers found that the basic number-matching task activated the right parietal cortex, while the addition and subtraction tasks produced additional activity in the left parietal cortex. But they also found something new: During the arithmetic tasks, communication between the left and right hemispheres increased significantly compared with the number-matching task. Moreover, people who exhibited the strongest connection between hemispheres were the fastest at solving the subtraction problems.

"Our results suggest that subtraction performance is optimal when there is high coherence in the neural activity in these two brain regions. Two brain areas working together rather than either region alone appears to be key" said co-author Dr. Denise C. Park, co-director of the UT Dallas Center for Vital Longevity and Distinguished University Chair in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Park (no relation to the lead author) helped direct the study along with Dr. Thad Polk, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan.

Lead author Dr. Joonkoo Park points out that the findings suggest that disrupted or inefficient neural communication between the hemispheres may contribute to the impaired math abilities seen in dyscalculia, the numerical equivalent of dyslexia. "If such a causal link exists," he said, "one very interesting avenue of research would be to develop training tasks to enhance parietal connectivity and to test whether they improve numerical competence."

Such a training program might help develop math ability in children and could also help older adults whose arithmetic skills begin to falter as a normal part of age-related cognitive decline.

This research was supported by a grant to Dr. Denise C. Park from the National Institute on Aging.

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:


Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Texas at Dallas, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. J. Park, D. C. Park, T. A. Polk. Parietal Functional Connectivity in Numerical Cognition. Cerebral Cortex, 2012; DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhs193

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/q0iEVbY5LN0/120829103516.htm

alyssa bustamante protandim weightless ellen degeneres jcpenney yeardley love nba all star reserves rock center