news
David Limbaugh reports on one example of the consequences of the No Child Left Behind Act. While I laud Bush and Congress for acting to fix the oh so obvious failure of the public school system to educate, their action was in this case misguided. Subsidiarity teaches us that governance moved away from the people is not right, that our society should be governed at the lowest level capable of handling a given problem. No Child Left Behind flies in the face of this principle, and here we see the results: it is predictably being used to further stifle excellence, but, now, parents challenging this trend must go to federal court, not to a local school board that they can more easily control.

The BBC reports on the planned meeting of scientists who don’t buy the prevalent hype on global warming. Professor Fred Singer, a former director of the US Weather Satellite Service, is quoted saying that “The greenhouse warming from increased gas emissions is, as far as we can tell, insignificant. It’s unlikely to be appreciable even a century from now, and we can easily adapt to it.” Not what you hear in the news every week, now is that? hhmmm.

Also in the BBC, this article talks about a recent study on the Shroud of Turin that calls into question the 1988 radiocarbon dating find. Perhaps science will once again allow us to believe that the Shroud is legitimate. I wouldn’t hold your breath though.

In their unending quest to blur the distinction between Man and animal, scientists are experimenting with chimeras, as reported by National Geographic here. Naturally there is some legit research to be done in this area. Some things we already do to save lives, like replacing heart valves with those from cows or pigs. But this article rightly questions how far is too far.

Findlaw reports on a pair of school kids now up on felony charges. For what you ask? They drew threatening stick figures. Yes. Stick Figures. Local6.com provides additional detail, though I do not know how long it will be up. Apparently these stick figures were sufficient to cause “extreme fear” in another 10 year old. Certainly this could have been handled in some other fashion…

In other, went to Pub Quiz at the 4Ps last night, and surprise surprise, Jenn came. :-) We had a very good time. I haven’t gotten to see Jenn in forever, so it was awesome. PVI wrestled Gonzaga yesterday, Michael lost his varsity match, won his exhibition match. I think he could have defeated the varsity kid, but he gets so discouraged when the other guy has a strong ability to break you down. I know how that is, it is very hard to continually work up, so I do not, cannot, fault him for having lost; he tried hard the whole match.