DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — An investigation into an embattled Daytona Beach high school principal revealed she claimed to teach a class that never existed.
[….]
An investigation into [Mainland High School Principal Cheryl] Salerno said she was assigned to teach a two semester speech course, but that course never existed.
According to the investigation, nine students enrolled in the class and received A’s, but there was no evidence the class ever met or that any course work was assigned.
When challenged, officials said Salerno told them she would produce the students work, but never did.
In addition, Volusia County School Board Chair Carl Persis said Salerno hired two people as guidance counselors who were not certified or qualified for the job.
This woman was a principal? Teaching kids?
Teaching them what? How to lie and deceive their way through life? (more…)
Like many people, we generally love sports. We love the idea of groups and individuals competing hard in a contest and then enjoying the camaraderie of a shared interest after the contest is over. We have always felt that sports are a way to bridge gaps, bring people together and have a good time while doing it.
Lately, some of our love for sports has begun to wane. Whether it be NFL players who feel “disrespected” by offers of $30 million dollar contracts, tennis players who yell and spit at umpires, players who when they score in football or soccer think they did it all by themselves and run away from teammates screaming “look at me!” Accusations of cheating at the Little League World Series for teams stealing signs (Here’s an idea…..change your signs.), major league pitchers throwing at the heads of opponents in the wake of bat flips, taunting and general stupidity, we have simply gotten tired of the entitlement mentality.
“Droogie” (not his real name) made a presentation to this years DefCon hacking conference where his funny and mischievous plan didn’t turn out quite like he wanted.
Droogie is a security researcher who decided that in order to prank and cause law enforcement license plate readers issues, he would register for the vanity plate of “NULL.”
“Null” in computer programming is a term for no specific value.
The “plan” was that the DMV’s computers and law enforcement plate scanners would see “null” in the data and think nothing was there.
If you ever get into a conversation with people on the subject of healthcare, those who support socialized healthcare will usually bring up several points. The first is that other countries have socialized health care. (Countries like England, for example.) The second point is that the US pays more for health care than other countries with no difference in outcome. (That’s demonstrably false, but that’s not the discussion for today.)
Years ago we heard the theory that while there is not one single cause of the difference in health care costs, (un-needed tests, lawsuits, etc.) one cause is often overlooked: “heath care now.”
Americans are a funny lot sometimes. We want what we want and what we paid for. Often – even in the case of health care – we want it now.
From the Guardian:
The number of A&E patients [Accident and Emergency patients] in England waiting on trolleys for more than four hours to be admitted has risen by over a third to the highest level since records began, prompting warnings that cash pledged by the government will not be enough to relieve the acute pressure on the NHS. (more…)
Do not trifle with the back yard garden of Eden of 89 year old great grandmother Garlene Eiceman up in Tallahassee.
Like many people, Eiceman had set out a bird feeder where birds and squirrels would stop by for a bite to eat. But then something strange started to happen.
The birds started to disappear and some stopped coming her “seed shack.”
The culprit?
A snake.
About three weeks ago, Eiceman looked on in horror when she saw a snake slither out of a bird box where she’d been watching a nest of three baby blue birds be tended by their parents.
The snake’s throat had a tell-tale bulge.
“I started crying, I didn’t know what to
do,” said Eiceman, a great-grandmother of six and a grandmother of six, who goes by the nickname Grandma Bunny. “The snake went down and up a wooden flower box and it went out of sight. After that all the birds disappeared.”
Eiceman was not about to let this interloper affect her little slice of heaven and its inhabitants.
She removed all the places a snake could hide, including all the bird houses. Eventually she spotted the snake. As soon as she did she ran and grabbed a hammer and a twig. (more…)
In his presidential campaign and the first years of his presidency, Donald Trump’s rhetoric on racial and ethnic groups defied contemporary conventions for politicians, especially at the presidential level (Valentino, Neuner and Vandenbrook, 2017). In the elections leading up to 2016, presidential candidates who sought to harness animus toward African Americans or other groups often did so through implicit cues rather than explicit rhetoric (Mendelberg, 2001). Donald Trump broke decisively from this norm. In announcing his candidacy, he termed immigrants from Mexico “rapists,” and he later called for a ban on Muslim immigration and initially declined to renounce a former KKK leader. As President, he said that there were “very fine people on both sides” of a violent confrontation between white supremacists and protestors in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Here is the entire quote from Trump calling immigrants from Mexico “rapists:”
“They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Not exactly the same thing as labeling all immigrants from Mexico as “rapists” is it?
Trump never called for a ban on Muslim immigration. The ban was for countries that supported terrorism. Many of the countries that were banned were Muslim, but there is a huge difference between banning people from terror supporting countries and banning people for their religious beliefs.
As to “initially declined to renounce a former KKK leader,” here’s the facts on that:
From a 2015 interview with Bloomberg News: (more…)
The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
