RUTHFULLY YOURS

Despite ever-growing educational spending and endless experimentation to discover magic bullets, the recent news from the education front is depressing. For example, scores on the National Assessment for Educational Progress (the NAEP) showed a lack of progress in reading and math proficiency — only a third of the nation’s eighth-graders were “proficient” (or above) in math while the figure was only slightly higher for fourth-graders. Even worst news comes from Washington DC and New York City. Both have made expensive efforts to uplift students and close the race-related academic achievement gap. In DC eighty-two percent of white students met the proficiency standard in English; the corresponding figure for Hispanics was 8%, for blacks it was 4%. Meanwhile, in New York City the school Chancellor tried to spin truly dreadful outcomes into a “success.” She hailed the substantial uptick in blacks and Hispanics taking the Advanced Placement (AP) tests but her celebration failed to mention that 95% of the Hispanic students and 97% of the African Americans students could not pass a single AP test (and this despite Hispanic students being able to take an AP test in the Spanish language and culture).

Needless to say, these disappointing outcomes (and there are many others) will only further energize professional educators to demand yet more “investing in our future” and countless budget busting panaceas and, I suspect, much of this clamor will be heeded. After all, who could deny that America requires an educated workforce in today’s cutthroat global economy?

The European Union is steeped in anti-Israeli leanings, but within some countries are obviously more impregnated than others. France is, it must be pointed out, first among those. After being the ally of Israel in 1950, she joined the ranks of the enemy, and then the more left. It all started with General de Gaulle, […]

Decades ago, Israel’s Prime Minister Golda Meir with her characteristic wit said, “Israelis have a secret weapon – we have nowhere else to go.”

The Druze, 140,000 members’ minority community in Israel, making them 2% of the entire population in Israel, deeply rooted in the land of Israel for centuries, living in villages on top of the Carmel mountain ridge and several villages in northern Israel, second Mrs. Meir.

The Druze people, originating in Southwestern Asia, are an Arabic speaking, ethno-religious group of approximately 1 million, residing primarily in Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan.

The Druze faith, with elements taken from Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is a monotheistic and Abrahamic religion that reveres the father-in-law of Moses, Jethro and believes in reincarnation. According to the biblical narrative, Jethro joined and assisted the Israelites in the desert during their Exodus, accepted monotheism, but ultimately rejoined his own people. The tomb of Jethro near Tiberias, Israel, is the most important religious site for the Druze community

The Paris climate conference is only about six weeks away, and evil Republican “climate deniers” are looking to slash federal funding of what passes nowadays for climate science. So what’s an agency like NASA to do?

Call in the New York Times for a junk science-fueled airstrike.

“Greenland Is Melting Away [1]” is certainly, as Times columnist Nick Kristof tweeted, “a visually amazing piece,” featuring impressive aerial and satellite imagery of the Greenland ice sheet. The underlying story, on the other hand, is much less amazing.

The article spotlights the efforts of a group of researchers who are collecting data on summertime melt of a river in Greenland. Readers are told:

[The] scientific data could yield groundbreaking information on the rate at which the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, one of the biggest and fastest-melting chunks of ice on Earth, will drive up sea levels in the coming decades.

This, the Times worries, could raise sea levels by … 20 feet.

I’ve seen how for-profit colleges can help students—many of them older and seeking better jobs—but the government and the media want to shut them down.
For the first time since I left the newspaper business, I feel I have some news. And it’s news that might shake up a stagnant Washington policy debate.

For-profit colleges have become a standard target of the progressive left (and not them alone). Their charges include: The students are recruited aggressively; the prices are too high; most of the students drop out and many incur high levels of debt and then default; for those who stick it out and graduate, the degrees aren’t worth much.

These charges have been so widely publicized and so often repeated that they have entered the realm of accepted truth. In some quarters, to defend any for-profit education company is to defend the indefensible. Hear me: There are huge differences among for-profit colleges, as among other colleges. Some for-profit colleges have behaved disgracefully to their students; I do not defend them.

This should not be available for the BDS scoundrels…..rsk
BioSight has figured out a way to fool cancer cells into allowing themselves to be killed off – without harming normal cells.

BioSight, a medical technology start-up, has developed a technology that enables leukemia patients to avoid the worst effects of chemotherapy.

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“Our interim results in a major study of patients with leukemia shows that our system yields the maximum efficiency from chemo, with a minimum of toxicity,” said Dr. Ruth Ben Yakar, CEO of BioSight. “Our method of using chemo does not cause brain damage or weaken blood cells,” with all its attendant phenomena, such as lethargy, loss of hair, etc.

BioSight’s “Trojan horse” chemo technology doesn’t only work for leukemia patients, said Ben Yakar. “We believe it will be effective in many other kinds of cancer as well. It’s a matter of finding the amino acid that a specific cancer is ‘allergic’ to, and packaging it in a structure that the cancer cell thinks contains material that strengthens it, while in reality it contains material that destroys it.”

The technology, said Ben Yakar, could become very important in the field of cancer treatment.”This really could be the cure for cancer.”

BioSight was one of a dozen start-ups that presented their technology at the annual Go4Israel conference in Tel Aviv Monday. Considered one of the most important gatherings of international investors in Israel, the conference discussed issues relevant to investors and start-ups, including raising funds and establishing strategic alliances between corporate, entrepreneurs and investors from around the world. Companies presenting at the event included firms in high-tech, life sciences, renewable energy, and others. Among the investors was a large delegation from Europe – particularly France – and from China.

Israel is a greater threat to America than anything emanating from the Muslim world, according to participants in an October 15 panel titled “The Future of Bipartisanship on Israel.” One of the nation’s largest Democratic Party campaign contributors, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), provided an appropriately partisan setting in their Washington, DC, headquarters for this biased panel. Columbia University professor and former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi moderated before an audience of around seventy, including Jerusalem Fund director Zeina Azzam.

Former CIA analyst and Georgetown University security studies researcher Paul Pillar (“one of the wisest people” on the Middle East, according to Khalidi) began the panel by dredging up the well-worn assertion that the U.S. suffers from its alliance with Israel. Downplaying broader jihadist motives, he claimed that the Arab-Israeli conflict is a “highly exploitable issue” that exacerbates “extremism and specifically, terrorist threats to the U.S.” American support for Israel is a “major drain on U.S. political and diplomatic capital,” he added.

I still believe in the ideal of a liberal arts education—even if, in practice, I’ve become more than a bit disenchanted.

As an undergraduate some 20 years ago majoring in religion and philosophy at Wingate University—a small, Southern Baptist institution in North Carolina—I was fortunate to have been taught by genuinely dedicated teachers who saw to it that their students received the classical education in the liberal arts for which they signed up.

To put this point another way, my professors resisted the temptation—a temptation that’s all too common among the professoriate in the contemporary academy—to abuse their vocational privileges by preaching to, rather than teaching, their students. The classroom, my instructors seemed to realize, was not the proper venue in which to air their political and ideological predilections.

In pursuing my master’s degree in philosophy from Baylor University, I became increasingly aware of some of my instructors’ political views, but there existed a reasonable degree of intellectual diversity in the department. This latter fact, coupled with my professors’ unquestionable commitment to the welfare of their students, made my time at Baylor one of the most enjoyable periods of my life.

“Not many people make national news by bringing a homemade clock to school,” gushed Time as it named Ahmed Mohamed to its list of “The 30 Most Influential Teens of 2015.” “But the ninth grader’s arrest, after teachers and authorities mistook said clock for a bomb, kicked off a national debate over racial profiling—and a outpouring of support for Mohamed, who was personally invited to the White House by President Obama (who called his clock ‘cool’). In October, he accepted a full scholarship to a prestigious school in Qatar.”

Racial profiling? Really? What race is jihad terror again? What race is carrying what could be a bomb to a school? I keep forgetting.

In any case, Time’s selection was perfectly fitting. Ahmed Mohamed probably deserves to be on the list more than any of the other 29 teens. As he hobnobbed with world leaders and was hailed as a hero by the international media, his influence was undeniable; the only question was whether it was a positive or a negative influence.

For Time and its mainstream media colleagues, of course, there was no question that Ahmed was a positive influence. He was a symbol of everything the media wants us to believe about Muslims and Islam: that Muslims are inventive, hard-working, industrious, and unjustly harassed by an out-of-control, racist and “Islamophobic” law enforcement establishment.

Before the Muslim terror stabbing spree, Netanyahu had made repeated efforts to meet with the leader of the PLO. And for once, Abbas, the PLO leader, had not been averse to a meeting.

Instead it was Secretary of State John Kerry who told Abbas not to meet with Netanyahu.

Abbas went to the UN and disavowed the Oslo Accords. The first Muslim stabbings of Jews, with the encouragement of the PLO, began a few days later.

It is unlikely that Kerry had directly told Abbas to escalate the violence, but he had sent him the same effective message by coordinating with the PLO boss at the expense of Netanyahu. The top terrorist came away with the understanding that the administration favored him and was hostile to Netanyahu.

And he was right.

So Abbas decided to see what another outburst of violence would net him.