Creationists shit all over science standards.

What can we expect from assholes? Nothing but shit.

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) call for teaching real science in public schools. The NGSS include evolution and climate change, but exclude "intelligent design" and other forms of creationism disguised as science.

In their effort to dumb down science classes in Kansas, creationist assholes calling themselves "Citizens for Objective Public Education" (COPE) instituted a frivolous lawsuit, claiming that the NGSS promote atheism. A federal judge flushed this particular turd down the toilet, but the COPE assholes have appealed the decision.

Read more:
http://www.emporiagazette.com/news/state/article_eb7fc1e6-45fe-519c-8ed4-546855fe3866.html

In W. Virginia the assholes produced a different turd: they successfully dumbed down the NGSS-based standards adopted by the West Virginia Board of Education.

Read more:
http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20141228/GZ01/141229489/1419

How fast have you double-clutched into low gear?

This post won't make sense unless you have driven an old stick shift. Low gear, unlike second gear and high gear, was not synchromesh. That meant that unless you wanted to strip your gears, you needed to get the RPMs just right before shifting down to low gear while moving.

The procedure is as follows. You press down on the clutch pedal, put the transmission in neutral, let up on the clutch, rev up the motor, press down again, shift into low, then let up on the clutch again. The higher your speed, the higher the RPMs needed for this maneuver. If you miscalculate, there goes your transmission.

As a smartass high schooler, I used to pride myself on my ability to double-clutch without making that horrible grinding sound. I once did this at 36 MPH, which in a 6 cylinder Ford required very high RPMs indeed. Not having a tachometer, I judged the RPMs by the sound of the motor.

New Year's Day? It doesn't feel different from any other day.

Long long ago, according to Wikipedia, Romans celebrated New Years day on March 1, not January 1.

Comparisons among Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, and Verizon Fios VOD

These are three different streaming services for movies and TV shows. From my vast experience with all three services, I offer the following list of their advantages and disadvantages.

Netflix HD streaming costs me about $9 per month. This is in addition to Netflix DVD service, which costs a similar amount. Old TV shows are streamed without commercials, which is a huge advantage. My TV remote control has a button labelled "Netflix", which I use frequently.

Amazon Instant Video is generally a high-priced pay per view service, but some of their content is free for those of us with Amazon Prime accounts. An Amazon Prime account costs about $100 per year, which is comparable to the price of Netflix streaming, but it also includes free second-day shipping of books and other merchandise from Amazon.com. My TV remote control has another button labelled "Amazon", which would be convenient if the interface were less cumbersome and not so full of glitches. I use this service to watch stuff that does not stream on Netflix.

Verizon is the local phone company and supplies TV and internet service as well. "Fios" is their acronym for the service with the highest bandwidth, which uses FIber OpticS (get it?) rather than copper wire. "Video on demand" (VOD) is their jargon for streaming. With VOD I can only get replays of TV shows from channels I subscribe to. Old TV shows are streamed complete with the fucking commercials. And what's worse, Verizon won't let me skip the fucking commercials. This "service" really SUCKS.

Have I gotten anything wrong or left anything out?

Children harvest crops and sacrifice dreams in Mexico's fields

By RICHARD MAROSI
Photography & Video by DON BARTLETTI
DEC. 14, 2014

An estimated 100,000 Mexican children under 14 pick crops for pay. Alejandrina, 12, wanted to be a teacher. Instead, she became a nomadic laborer, following the pepper harvest from farm to farm.

Fourth of four stories

REPORTING FROM TEACAPAN, MEXICO

Alejandrina Castillo swept back her long black hair and reached elbow-deep into the chile pepper plants. She palmed and plucked the fat serranos, dropping handful after tiny handful into a bucket.The container filled rapidly. Alejandrina stopped well before the pepper pile reached the brim.

She was 12, and it was hard for her to lift a full 15-pound load.

One row over was her brother Fidel, 13, who couldn't keep up with her. He was daydreaming as usual. Their 10-year-old cousin, Jesus, was trying harder but falling behind too.

Alejandrina looked in the distance for the food truck. It was almost noon, five hours since she had a tortilla for breakfast. The sky was cloudless. It would be another 90-degree day in the palm-lined coastal farmland of southern Sinaloa.

"I wish I was home with my baby brother," she said.

Read more: http://graphics.latimes.com/product-of-mexico-children/

The Company Store is alive and well in Mexico.

A story in the LA Times reminded me of a song:

Desperate workers on a Mexican mega-farm: 'They treated us like slaves'

As promised, here is part 2 of a 4-part LA Times series
by RICHARD MAROSI
DEC. 10, 2014 | REPORTING FROM SAN GABRIEL, MEXICO

Scorpions and bedbugs. Constant hunger. No pay for months. Finally, a bold escape leads to a government raid, exposing deplorable conditions. But justice proves elusive.

Ricardo Martinez and Eugenia Santiago were desperate.

At the labor camp for Bioparques de Occidente, they and other farmworkers slept sprawled head to toe on concrete floors. Their rooms crawled with scorpions and bedbugs. Meals were skimpy, hunger a constant. Camp bosses kept people in line with threats and, when that failed, with their fists.

Escape was tempting but risky. The compound was fenced with barbed wire and patrolled by bosses on all-terrain vehicles. If the couple got beyond the gates, local police could arrest them and bring them back. Then they would be stripped of their shoes.

Martinez, 28, and Santiago, 23, decided to chance it. Bioparques was one of Mexico's biggest tomato exporters, a supplier for Wal-Mart and major supermarket chains. But conditions at the company's Bioparques 4 camp had become unbearable.

They left their backpacks behind to avoid suspicion and walked out the main gate. As they approached the highway, a car screeched up. Four camp bosses jumped out. One waved a stick at them.

Read more: http://graphics.latimes.com/product-of-mexico-labor/

Hardship on Mexico's farms, a bounty for U.S. tables

By RICHARD MAROSI
Photography & Video by DON BARTLETTI
DEC. 7, 2014

Hardship on Mexico's farms, a bounty for U.S. tables

Source: Los Angeles Times

By RICHARD MAROSI
Photography & Video by DON BARTLETTI
DEC. 7, 2014

A Times reporter and photographer find that thousands of laborers at Mexico's mega-farms endure harsh conditions and exploitation while supplying produce for American consumers.

Many farm laborers are essentially trapped for months at a time in rat-infested camps, often without beds and sometimes without functioning toilets or a reliable water supply. Some camp bosses illegally withhold wages to prevent workers from leaving during peak harvest periods. Laborers often go deep in debt paying inflated prices for necessities at company stores. Some are reduced to scavenging for food when their credit is cut off. It's common for laborers to head home penniless at the end of a harvest. Those who seek to escape their debts and miserable living conditions have to contend with guards, barbed-wire fences and sometimes threats of violence from camp supervisors.

The farm laborers are mostly indigenous people from Mexico's poorest regions. Bused hundreds of miles to vast agricultural complexes, they work six days a week for the equivalent of $8 to $12 a day. The squalid camps where they live, sometimes sleeping on scraps of cardboard on concrete floors, are operated by the same agribusinesses that employ advanced growing techniques and sanitary measures in their fields and greenhouses.

Read more: http://graphics.latimes.com/product-of-mexico-camps/

R.I.P. Alexander Grothendieck

The great mathematician Alexander Grothendieck died a few days ago. He was 86 years old.

Alexander Grothendieck ( ... 28 March 1928 – 13 November 2014) was a German-born French mathematician, and the leading figure in creating modern algebraic geometry. His research program vastly extended the scope of the field, incorporating major elements of commutative algebra, homological algebra, sheaf theory, and category theory into its foundations. This new perspective led to revolutionary advances across many areas of pure mathematics.