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n2doc's JournalUC-Berkeley and other ‘public Ivies’ in fiscal peril
By Daniel de Vise, Published: December 26
BERKELEY, Calif. — Across the nation, a historic collapse in state funding for higher education threatens to diminish the stature of premier public universities and erode their mission as engines of upward social mobility.
At the University of Virginia, state support has dwindled in two decades from 26 percent of the operating budget to 7 percent. At the University of Michigan, it has declined from 48 percent to 17 percent.
Not even the nation’s finest public university is immune. The University of California at Berkeley — birthplace of the free-speech movement, home to nine living Nobel laureates — subsists now in perpetual austerity. Star faculty take mandatory furloughs. Classes grow perceptibly larger each year. Roofs leak; e-mail crashes. One employee mows the entire campus. Wastebaskets are emptied once a week. Some professors lack telephones.
Behind these indignities lie deeper problems. The state share of Berkeley’s operating budget has slipped since 1991 from 47 percent to 11 percent. Tuition has doubled in six years, and the university is admitting more students from out of state willing to pay a premium for a Berkeley degree. This year, for the first time, the university collected more money from students than from California.
more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/uc-berkeley-and-other-public-ivies-in-fiscal-peril/2011/12/14/gIQAfu4YJP_story.html
A Step-By-Step Guide to Boycotting GoDaddy.com
Update: Don't miss our guide to which ethical domain hosts you should use instead of GoDaddy.
This week, GoDaddy.com CEO Bob Parsons caused a stir by posting a video of himself killing an elephant in Zimbabwe. Previously, Parsons had upset feminists with his ultra-sexist advertising. It seems like perhaps Parsons and his company aren't necessarily the type of people with whom we'd like to do business, which is why GOOD has decided to pull all of its sites from GoDaddy.com. If you'd like to join us and let Parsons know you don't give money to colonialist misogynists, follow these 10 simple steps.
rest:
http://www.good.is/post/how-to-leave-godaddy-com/
House prices fall sharply in October
Dow Jones Newswires
8:13 a.m. CST, December 27, 2011
U.S. home prices declined in October from a month earlier with particular weakness seen in the Midwest and Atlanta, according to the Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller home-price indexes.
Chicago home prices were down 1.8 percent in October following a 0.8 precent drop in September. Year-over-year, Chicago home prices were down 4.8 percent.
Overall, eighteen of the 20 cities in the Case-Shiller index index showed a year-over-year decline, led by a 12 percent drop in Atlanta.
Now in its fifth year of a historic downtown, the housing market has remained sluggish this year despite lower home prices and record low interest rates. Of the 20 major U.S. metropolitan markets covered by the indices in October, 19 reported lower prices from September.
more
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-house-prices-fall-sharply-in-october-20111227,0,3463997.story
Growing wealth widens distance between lawmakers and constituents
Growing wealth widens distance between lawmakers and constituents
By Peter Whoriskey, Monday, December 26, 2:54 PM
BUTLER, Pa. — One day after his shift at the steel mill, Gary Myers drove home in his 10-year-old Pontiac and told his wife he was going to run for Congress.
The odds were long. At 34, Myers was the shift foreman at the “hot mill” of the Armco plant here. He had no political experience, little or no money, and he was a Republican in a district that tilted Democratic.
snip:
Between 1984 and 2009, the median net worth of a member of the House has risen 2 1 / 2 times, according to the analysis of financial disclosures, rising from $280,000 to $725,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Over the same period, the wealth of an American family has declined slightly, with the median sliding from $20,600 to $20,500, according to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics from the University of Michigan.
rest of article
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/growing-wealth-widens-distance-between-lawmakers-and-constituents/2011/12/05/gIQAR7D6IP_story.html?hpid=z1
Tortured
Bush’s crimes, Obama’s blind eye, and the death of accountability
by Kathryn Sikkink, from The Justice Cascade
January-February 2012
I first began to learn about the human rights violations of the George W. Bush administration after 9/11: I still recall an email from an Argentine colleague asking me whether they were starting to “disappear” people in the United States. At the time, I thought she was referring to Middle Easterners residing in the United States who were being detained for long periods without charges in the period after 9/11. I wrote back to say that although this was indeed arbitrary detention without trial, these people were not disappeared. We now know that I was wrong.
By 2002 the CIA was indeed taking detainees to “black sites,” secret detention centers where they were tortured and interrogated. American officials were denying that they knew the whereabouts of these detainees, and they did not allow the International Red Cross to visit them. This fits the technical definition of disappearance. U.N. experts have clarified that international law completely prohibits such secret detention.
By the spring of 2004, after the photos of torture and degrading treatment of inmates in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq appeared, and the report of U.S. General Antonio Taguba, who investigated the abuses, was leaked to the press, I walked into the last human rights class of the semester at the University of Minnesota and said to my students: “I have been teaching this class for over 10 years, and I have to stand up and say something today that I have not said before. We have clear proof that the United States government has engaged in torture and cruel and unusual punishment of detainees.”
Starting in 2005 I began to present research in a series of conference papers, lectures, and eventually a chapter in a book titled Bringing Human Rights Home. But in all these earlier versions, I assumed that U.S. officials would not have knowingly adopted policies that were criminal under both U.S. and international law. Since that time, additional interviews and a wealth of new publications have helped me realize that Bush administration officials understood the law. They didn’t use this understanding to ensure good-faith compliance, but they did use it to craft strategies to protect themselves from the possibility of future prosecution.
Read more: http://www.utne.com/Politics/Tortured-No-Accountability-For-Bush-Administration-War-Crimes.aspx#ixzz1hgNDY7hS
Scottish couple unearth '800-year-old' stone head in their garden that looks like Homer Simpson
by CHARLES WALFORD
Last updated at 7:48 AM on 23rd December 2011
Whoever carved the statue would not have had TV's favourite cartoon anti-hero in mind - but there is no doubting the resemblance of this stone head to Homer Simpson
It was found by Rosalind and Donald McIntyre when they were clearing the bottom of their garden at their home in Fife, Scotland, earlier this year.
The couple were working in their garden when Mrs McIntyre picked up the head.
She took it to St Andrews Museum, and the discovery has been referred to the National Committee for Carved Stones of Scotland.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2077626/Doh-Stunned-couple-unearth-800-year-old-stone-head-garden--looks-like-HOMER-SIMPSON.html#ixzz1hgLrS3Xk
Santa Claus Plays "Jingle Bells" with the Colt 1911
Santa Cruz woman thwarts mugger...
By JESSICA M. PASKO - Santa Cruz Sentinel
Posted: 12/23/2011 12:56:52 PM PST
A would-be mugger made off with something more malodorous than money Thursday morning, police said.
An unknown man approached a 62-year-old woman as she was walking her dog just before 10 a.m. on the 100 block of Dakota. The man demanded the woman she give him everything she had, and he said that if she didn't, he would kick her dog.
The woman handed him a bag and the suspect fled. Unbeknownst to the suspect, the bag she gave him contained her dog's feces.
The suspect is still on the loose. He's described as a white man, about 18 to 22 years of age, and about 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighing 160 pounds. He was wearing a black sweatshirt and blue jeans.
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_19608752
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