1. The Victims
2. The Nonbelievers
3. The Know-It-Alls
Record Numbers of Homeless Kids Putting Strain on Schools
At 15, Jarvis Nelson should be in high school and even thinking about college.
Yet Jarvis is in seventh grade, and doesn’t know where he’ll go to high school — or even where he will be living — when he graduates from junior high, hopefully next year.
That’s because Jarvis has attended three different schools in the past four months. He’s lived in three different places on the North and South Sides of the city — including his most recent home, a temporary shelter in Lake View.
Jarvis, like thousands of other students in Chicago Public Schools, is homeless.
He is just one of more than 10,660 students who were homeless at the beginning of the school year. That’s 1,466 more than at the same point in the previous school year, according to a CPS tally.
Thanks to Kedmobee for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community. http://kebmodee.blogspot.com/2012/01/number-of-homeless-students-surges.html#links
“If Fred got two beatings per day…” grade school math homework in Georgia this week
Third graders in in Gwinnett County, Ga., were given math homework Wednesday that asked questions about slavery and beatings.
Christopher Braxton told ABC News affiliate WSB-TV in Atlanta that he couldn’t believe the assignment his 8-year-old son brought home from of Beaver Ridge Elementary school in Norcross.
“It kind of blew me away,” Braxton said. “Do you see what I see? Do you really see what I see? He’s not answering this question.”
The question read, “Each tree had 56 oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?”
Another math problem read, “If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week?”
Another question asked how many baskets of cotton Frederick filled.
“I was furious at that point,” Braxton said.
“This outrages me because it just lets me know that there’s still racists,” said Stephanie Jones, whose child is a student at the school.
“Something like that shouldn’t be imbedded into a kid of the third, fourth, fifth, any grade,” parent Terrance Barnett told WSB-TV. “I’m having to explain to my 8-year-old why slavery or slaves or beatings are in a math problem. That hurts.”
“In this one, the teachers were trying to do a cross-curricular activity,” Gwinnett County school district spokeswoman Sloan Roach said.
Roach said the teachers were attempting to incorporate social studies into math problems.
“We understand that there are concerns about these questions, and we agree that these questions were not appropriate,” she said.
Thanks to Mr. C for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.
How to See the Blood Vessels in Your Eye
Sensory adaptation, the same phenomenon that causes you to stop hearing a continually ticking clock, also prevents you from seeing the branching network of blood vessels inside your eye. Except when you use the simple trickdemonstrated in this video.
The video was posted by thegnome54, a YouTuber studying cognitive neuroscience at Brown University, and all you need to do it at home is an index card punched with a pinhole (our narrator shows you how to use just your finger too) and a uniform source of light, like a blank web page in your browser. Because your brain is used to seeing the shadows cast by the blood vessels inside your eye day after day, you stop seeing them. And presumably that happens shortly after birth.
But this simple trick, which involves looking through the small hole while it quickly moves up and down, changes those shadows just enough so that your brain recognizes them again. Allowing you to actually visualize the vessels crisscrossing your eye like the branches of a tree. Actually seeing them for the first time is a little freaky, but I was even more impressed at how quickly your brain starts ignoring them again when the hole stops moving.
Doctors Going Broke
Doctors in America are harboring an embarrassing secret: Many of them are going broke.
This quiet reality, which is spreading nationwide, is claiming a wide range of casualties, including family physicians, cardiologists and oncologists.
Industry watchers say the trend is worrisome. Half of all doctors in the nation operate a private practice. So if a cash crunch forces the death of an independent practice, it robs a community of a vital health care resource.
“A lot of independent practices are starting to see serious financial issues,” said Marc Lion, CEO of Lion & Company CPAs, LLC, which advises independent doctor practices about their finances.
read more: http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/05/smallbusiness/doctors_broke/
New Creatures Discovered in Antarctica
Sea creatures have always held our interest, if only for their odd and other-worldly looks. And the species don’t get any weirder than the critters that cluster around deep sea vents, the earth’s underwater exhaust system. Researchers have discovered a host of new species of crab, barnacles and octopi huddled around the warmth of black smoker vent chimneys emerging from the ocean floor in the Antarctic.Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2103587_2103586_2103577,00.html #ixzz1ibyd61JV
Domino’s Pizza on the Moon?
The Japanese wing of Domino’s Pizza has recently announced their intention to build an outlet on the surface of the Moon. Thus far, the company has already commissioned plans for a two-storey, dome-shaped pizzeria which would simultaneously serve pizza and house its staff. Cost is estimated at $21.8 Billion.
Child sacrificed in India in hopes of improving harvest
A seven-year-old Indian girl was murdered in a tribal sacrifice and her liver offered to the gods to improve crop growth, police in the central state of Chhattisgarh said on Sunday.
The body of Lalita Tati was found in October one week after her family reported her missing.
“A seven-year-old girl was sacrificed by two persons superstitiously believing that the act would give a better harvest,” Narayan Das, the police chief of Bijapur district, told AFP by telephone.
The two men was arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of killing the girl and offering her liver to the gods in a grisly tribal ceremony. Police said the men had confessed to the crime.
The girl was murdered in a jungle district of Chhattisgarh that is a stronghold of rebel Maoists who have tapped into disaffection among local tribal groups.
Human sacrifices occasionally make headlines in deeply religious and superstitious India, and usually occur in poor areas where some people revere practitioners of black magic.
Two suspected child sacrifices were reported in Chhattisgarh in 2010, while in the same year the decapitated body of a factory worker was found in a temple in the eastern state of West Bengal.
The victims are often ritually killed by witchdoctors to appease gods, spirits or deities.
http://news.yahoo.com/child-sacrificed-liver-offered-gods-indian-police-074513654.html
Marriage Proposal Gone Wrong
Midway through a 71-63 victory over Richmond Dec. 23 at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, UCLA’s “Mistletoe Cam” cut to a couple seated courtside. The man reaches into his pocket, pulls out a ring and says, “I knew that I was going to do this since the first day that I met you, and I figured now was as good a time as any.” His girlfriend’s response when he gets down on one knee and pops the question? Well, let’s just say it involved an awkward pause and running in the other direction.
Thanks to Mr. C for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.
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