Monday, August 25, 2003
On the soapbox again. Hello fellow web travelers, I'm Larry Lovering and this is the news you may not know about.
The New York Observer carried a Page 1 story today about four moms, all 9/11 widows, doing their best to uncover the truth about the pre-events of the attack on the World Trade Center. It's riveting reading, and shows that some people will not sit still and accept the "truth" that is fed to them. I'm not a counter-cultural person, mind you, but this story could make you think about conspiracy theories.
These women; Kristen Breitweiser, Patty Casazza, Mindy Kleinberg and Lorie van Auken have successfully sat in front of FBI Director Robert Mueller III and Congressional committees. Their resolve is amazing and the questions they ask are some of the ones we only think about. Read the story and let your friends know about it, its not something they will hear about very often.
The crew of a yacht off the coast of Australia was most surprised by the actions of a 10-ton white whale that jumped into their boat last week. It nearly sunk the 40-foot boat, but faces a new threat, that of human stalkers. The humpbacked whale, rare for being albino, has been observed in Australian waters near the Great Barrier Reef since 1991. The worry for environmental representatives is that someone will exploit the whale and make more opportunities for boats and swimmers to be near the whale, which because of its color cannot stay on the surface very long due to burning of its skin from the sun. "It needs our protection, not our attention. We don't need to turn whales into rock stars," Paul Forestell said. "If we want to take care of them, we should leave them alone and stop loving them to death." Full story on CNN.Com.
Back to the English as the only language-we-use-debate. An earlier story in the Boston Globe reported that "The Lawrence (Mass.) Eagle-Tribune reported in August that the local superintendent of schools, Wilfredo T. Laboy, had recently failed (for the third time) the basic English proficiency test required of all teachers in the state. (English is Laboy's second language.) The state education commissioner said that Laboy was doing "an excellent job" but that he was still going to have to pass the test (a test which Laboy called "stupid"). [Boston Globe-AP, 8-4-03] "
The latest news on this story is that Laboy has let 17 teachers in the Lawrence school system go because they could not pass an oral exam in English. Paul Sullivan, of WBZ in Boston had an excellent take on this whole debate about English being used as the only language of education, business and government.
Ho hum. Isn't life exciting?
Au revoir,
|
The New York Observer carried a Page 1 story today about four moms, all 9/11 widows, doing their best to uncover the truth about the pre-events of the attack on the World Trade Center. It's riveting reading, and shows that some people will not sit still and accept the "truth" that is fed to them. I'm not a counter-cultural person, mind you, but this story could make you think about conspiracy theories.
These women; Kristen Breitweiser, Patty Casazza, Mindy Kleinberg and Lorie van Auken have successfully sat in front of FBI Director Robert Mueller III and Congressional committees. Their resolve is amazing and the questions they ask are some of the ones we only think about. Read the story and let your friends know about it, its not something they will hear about very often.
The crew of a yacht off the coast of Australia was most surprised by the actions of a 10-ton white whale that jumped into their boat last week. It nearly sunk the 40-foot boat, but faces a new threat, that of human stalkers. The humpbacked whale, rare for being albino, has been observed in Australian waters near the Great Barrier Reef since 1991. The worry for environmental representatives is that someone will exploit the whale and make more opportunities for boats and swimmers to be near the whale, which because of its color cannot stay on the surface very long due to burning of its skin from the sun. "It needs our protection, not our attention. We don't need to turn whales into rock stars," Paul Forestell said. "If we want to take care of them, we should leave them alone and stop loving them to death." Full story on CNN.Com.
Back to the English as the only language-we-use-debate. An earlier story in the Boston Globe reported that "The Lawrence (Mass.) Eagle-Tribune reported in August that the local superintendent of schools, Wilfredo T. Laboy, had recently failed (for the third time) the basic English proficiency test required of all teachers in the state. (English is Laboy's second language.) The state education commissioner said that Laboy was doing "an excellent job" but that he was still going to have to pass the test (a test which Laboy called "stupid"). [Boston Globe-AP, 8-4-03] "
The latest news on this story is that Laboy has let 17 teachers in the Lawrence school system go because they could not pass an oral exam in English. Paul Sullivan, of WBZ in Boston had an excellent take on this whole debate about English being used as the only language of education, business and government.
Ho hum. Isn't life exciting?
Au revoir,
|
