Virginia Tech … One Year Later … Day of Mourning After Worst Shooting Rampage in US History

Today, we remember those that lost their lives at VA Tech in Blacksburg, VA  and pray for their family and friends that they may find peace in such a tragic and horrible event. Please say a prayer.

It is hard to believe that it was only one year ago when the worst shooting massacre in US history took place at VA Tech. 32 people were senselessly killed during Seung-Hui Cho’s rampage. It is always tragic when one passes. It is made even more sad when those that die are so young and full of promise. It is made even more profoundly unimaginable when 32 are taken at once due to a mad man with mental issues.

However, this is not about the killer … this is about those that perished, remembering and honoring them, and their family and friends. It is obvious that the pain still exists for families at their loss. There are some times no words of comfort that we can provide. We can only let them know that we are thinking an praying for them. Today, we all become VA Tech alumni and pray for Hokie nation.

The darkness was broken by the flickering of a white candle, lit at the stroke of midnight. Soft weeping and the solemn strains of “Taps” were all that broke the silence of more than a thousand people gathered around the 32 memorial stones honoring the dead.

A Living Memorial After Virginia Tech

A year after Va. Tech, campuses more wary

Oscar’s Dismal Ratings, Academy Awards Movies Show Get Lowest Audience on Record

Say it isn’t so? The Academy Awards telecast received the smallest Oscar audience on record. Wow, that is so hard to believe … NOT!!!

Please, the reason for the low viewership was not the recent Hollywood writer’s strike, nor the rainy weather in southern California. Maybe it’s because of Hollywood’s recent disconnect with actual Americans. Maybe it’s because regular Americans are growing wearing of actors and their elitists attitudes trying to ram their liberal agenda down their audiences throat. The Oscars have become nothing more than elitists honoring elitists for movies that none of us can stomach to watch.

However, the real reason is quite obvious. No one watched these nominated movies by the Academy Awards when they were in the movie theatres, why would anyone think that people would want to watch an awards show rewarding movies that no one wanted to watch in the first place? DUH!!! Oscar may want to rethink that business model.

Sunday’s audience was down sharply from last year’s 40.17 million and also below the kudocast’s previous low-water mark of 33.04 million in 2003 (a show held just days after the country went to war in Iraq).

This year’s Oscars had its own hurdles to overcome, most notably the four-month writers strike, which cut into preparation time for producers and writers.

The show averaged a 10.7 rating in adults 18-49, down 24% from last year (14.1) and 14% below the previous low of 2003 (12.5).

The top five highest-rated markets were New York (30.6 household rating/44 share), Chicago (29.1/43), San Francisco (27.2/47), West Palm Beach, Fla. (26.1/39), and Los Angeles (25.6/41). A year ago, New York generated a 35.3 rating and Los Angeles a 32.0.

Oscars telecast is the lowest-rated ever

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Retired Teacher John Corcoran Says He Was Illiterate Until Age 48

The irony is not lost in the following story and the education system in the US. He obviously did not know how to spell edumacation, or read and write but did he know arithmetic

John Corcoran, a retired school teacher who  taught high school for 17 years without being able to read, write or spell. A teacher who cheated his way into a position of teaching children. Great!!!

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Sylvester Stallone Back in Rambo 27 … Hollywood Critics Say, “No Plot” … No Duh!

Sylvester Stallone is back staring in Rambo 42, with as Hollywood critics say, not much of a plot.  What a shocker, were you expecting one? So how is this any different from the rest? Were you expecting an Oscar winning performance? If its a Rambo movie, we can all be safe in the assumption that there will be no plot … only plenty of bullets and body counts. Why else would one go to see a Rambo movie, it best not be for the plot. There is no truth to the myth that the story line is that Rambo teams up with the AARP to take on the bad guys.

The Sylvester Stallone nostalgia tour that began with another “Rocky” continues with this fourth “Rambo.” Although Stallone plays it completely straight, the mere idea of the aging action star strapping on the bandana again is risible enough to let the movie play like a comedy too, albeit one with an unusually high body count. So while much of the audience will show up to admire what armored-piercing weapons do to human flesh, others can giggle at the notion of Rambo’s return in a movie that doesn’t risk gumming up its carnage with much of a plot.

Academic Cheating Scandal Rocks Florida State Seminoles …25 Football Players Involved and Will Miss the Music City Bowl Against Kentucky

If you were planning on picking Florida State over the Kentucky Wildcats in the Music City Bowl, you may want to rethink that choice. At least 25 FSU Seminole players will be suspended for the game after their involvement in an academic cheating scandal. FSU had earlier reported to the NCAA in September an investigation by the school revealed at least 23 athletes in various sports were implicated for cheating on tests. Obviously, that was only the tip of the sugar coated iceberg.

An academic cheating scandal could leave Florida State without as many as 25 players when the Seminoles go against Kentucky in the Music City Bowl on Dec. 31.

“We have some players not traveling for one reason and some for another, including those who are ineligible for the bowl because of academic issues,” coach Bobby Bowden said in a statement released by the university Tuesday.

Bowden put the number of players involved in the 25-player range. Many of the players could also be ruled ineligible for some games next season for their connection to the cheating scandal earlier this year.

Federal privacy laws prohibit the school from releasing names.

Fla. St. shaken by fraud scandal

Stink of FSU academic fraud sticks to Bowden

The FSU players allegedly were given answers. They had papers written for them. In other words, pure, unadulterated cheating — of a sort that could not be mitigated by an athlete’s cruelly long odds in life or a family’s good intentions.

And the rest of us can start to wonder about — or choose to ignore — the pervasiveness in big-time college athletics of Internet courses as a means to push bad students through the system. Not that all Internet courses, or all student-athletes, are phony, although I am more suspicious in general of the former.

Oregon In-State Tuition for Illegal Aliens as Diversity Enrollment … So Much for the term “Illegal”

The underlying topic of the 2008 Presidential race is illegal immigration and how the United States will go forth with this issue.

What part about “illegal” in Illegal Aliens doesn’t out education system get? We are supposed to reward those that break the laws of the US and grant “illegals” the same status as a US College student. The State of Oregon is proposing to allow illegal aliens to get in-state tuition for people in this country illegally. If that’s the case then why don’t these same colleges allow every one in the United States to get in-State tuition. At least those students are in the country legally. Which begs the question, why would these schools even have an in or out of state tuition if they would allow people who should not even be in this country, let alone the state? What do you think would happen to a college student from Iowa that illegally stated he lived in Oregon to get the benefit of the decreased in-state tuition. But some how that’s different.

Why are we providing benefits to those that are “ILLEGAL” when this country cannot provide benefits to its own citizens?

PORTLAND, Ore. —  A panel of students, faculty and administrators is proposing charging in-state tuition for undocumented immigrant students at Oregon’s public universities.

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So You Think You are Smarter than a 5 Year Old Chimpanzees

“It’s amazing what this chimpanzee is able to do“

Once again chimps astonish researchers as they rival their human counterparts. The results showed that the chimps, “while no more accurate than the people, could do this faster”.

Think you’re smarter than a fifth-grader? How about a 5-year-old chimp? Japanese researchers pitted young chimps against human adults in tests of short-term memory, and overall, the chimps won.

That challenges the belief of many people, including many scientists, that “humans are superior to chimpanzees in all cognitive functions,” said researcher Tetsuro Matsuzawa of Kyoto University.

“No one can imagine that chimpanzees - young chimpanzees at the age of 5 - have a better performance in a memory task than humans,” he said in a statement.

Miami Dolphins & NY Giants to play NFL Game in London, England … “People Spoke English in London”

The Miami Dolphins and New York Giants are going to be playing a regular season NFL game in London, England this Sunday. Other than the fact that this is a ridiculous idea to market the NFL on a global stage, the game makes all the sense in the world. So much for football being about planned routines, implementing game plans and having players rest from the brutal hits they take during the course of a game. Let’s forget the 7 hour plane fight and the jet lag. The only thing more absurd and comical than NFL suits unfairly making two teams travel to London to play a game are the following comments from Miami Dolphins linebacker, Channing Crowder. Please tell us that he was kidding and being sarcastic.

Dolphins linebacker Channing Crowder confessed today he didn’t know until Tuesday that people spoke English in London.

Crowder, a former Florida Gator and Atlanta native, apparently isn’t sure where the plane is headed when it takes off this afternoon for Sunday’s game against the New York Giants in Wembley Stadium.

“I couldn’t find London on a map if they didn’t have the names of the countries,” Crowder said. “I swear to God. I don’t know what nothing is. I know Italy looks like a boot. I learned that.

“I know (Washington Redskins linebacker) London Fletcher. We did a football camp together. So I know him. That’s the closest thing I know to London. He’s black, so I’m sure he’s not from London. I’m sure that’s a coincidental name.” (Palm Beach Post)

So do you think he was kidding or serious? What do you think?

Shooting During Middle School Football Game … 4 People Wounded in Saginaw, MI

You know we are in trouble when one cannot attend a Middle school football game without hearing gun shots, let alone being shot. Such was the case in Saginaw, Michigan where 4 people were shot at the South Middle School. During half time of the game gunfire erupted wounding two teens and two adults. There have been no arrests made; however, there is a person of interest.

The injured teenagers were not students at South Middle School, where the shootings took place about 5:15 p.m. The other victims were an adult male and an adult female, Vanderhaar said. He declined to provide more details

About 100 people were attending the game when the shooting erupted a short distance from the school’s football field, where the team was playing Central Middle School, Vanderhaar said.

Parental Rights? Portland Maine Middle School Votes to give Birth Control to 11 to 15 Years Old

Parents … while you were sleeping you allowed these school board officials to to be voted in to usurp your authority.

Parental right and health issues are at center stage in Portland, ME as an out of control school board votes to allow giving the pill or patches to Middle School age girls. How young is too young and when is it ever healthy for an 11 year old to be taking a birth control pill?

Why stop at the middle school, next thing they will be proving the pill in Elementary School. Who is to stop it when you have school board officials with an agenda?

The students will need a parent’s written permission to access any services provided, but they would not have to disclose which service they receive, a point of contention for some.

The public school insanity continues. It wasn’t enough for public schools, in this case King Middle School in Portland, Maine to provide condoms to 11 and 15 year olds, now they have gone even farther. By a 7 to 2 vote King Middle School will be the first middle school in Maine to offer a full range of contraception in grades 6 to 8, when students are 11 to 15 years old. So much for providing birth control to your child being a parental right. The King Middle School motto is Knowledge, Motivation, Spirit + Teaching, Learning, Caring equals Success … I guess they need to add “the pill” to that as well.

While students need written parental permission to be treated at Portland’s school-based health centers, state law allows them to receive confidential care for reproductive health, mental health and substance abuse issues.

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