As Mary Kate Shannon waited to find out if she was pregnant after being raped for the second time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru, the health care coordinator told her her options were limited. “If I were pregnant, the Peace Corps could not pay for the abortion due to some kind of federal law,” Shannon recalled in an interview with Salon. They would, however, pay for parenting classes.”I felt betrayed,” Shannon said, “I felt like it was a decision that was going to be made for me. I wasn’t in a place financially where I felt like I could pay for it.”The pregnancy test came back negative, but the experience led Shannon to support to the newly-introduced Peace Corps Equity Act, which would extend insurance coverage for Peace Corps volunteers for abortions in instances of rape. ”The Peace Corps is the only government agency that doesn’t have [insurance coverage of abortion services] for women who become pregnant as a result of rape – it’s a technical fix in that sense,” said Casey Frazee of First Response Action, an advocacy group for Peace Corps volunteers who are survivors of sexual assault.Continue Reading… … Read More
Rutgers dismisses its athletic director
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – A person familiar with the decision says Tim Pernetti is out as Rutgers athletic director.The person spoke on condition of anonymity because an official announcement has not been made yet. The school will hold a press conference on campus at 1 p.m.Pernetti dismissed basketball coach Mike Rice Wednesday after a videotape aired showing him shoving, grabbing and throwing balls at players in practice and using gay slurs. The scandal has now cost Pernetti his job some five months after he didn’t fire Rice when the video first became available.Instead, with the approval of university president Robert Barchi, Pernetti, after being given the video in late November by a former employee, suspended Rice for three games, fined him $75,000 and ordered him to attend anger management classes. But the video was broadcast Tuesday on ESPN, and prompted scores of sharp criticism nationwide.Continue Reading… … Read More
Is Silver a good hedge for a Bitcoin position?
A print of $148 was recorded this morning followed by a reaction to the mid $120′s.Many bitcoin’ers are now sitting on massive gains. But because it is such a fresh concept and a brand new take on both currency and economics, finding a suitable hedge for Bitcoin is a topic completely undiscussed until now. I think silver provides a great place for some Bitcoin profits to go to give investors (and miners) a way to preserve wealth without reinvesting proceeds right back into the corrupt banking system. Remember, BTC was created, in part, as a reaction to the incredible wave of corruption and fraud we’ve see committed by central banks and ‘banksters’ on Wall St. and in the City of London. So recycling gains back into the system whose corruption spawned the need for Bitcoin in the fist place is counterproductive.Additionally, according to my analysis, as Bitcoin’s market cap continues to approach the market cap of silver, approximately $29bn. (implying a medium term target price for BTC of $2700), more capital will trade back and forth between these two asset classes as the enemies (or should I say victims) of the US dollar continue to operate outside the ‘terror zone’ of America’s Federal Reserve Bank. This is a positive for currencies: silver and Bitcoin.For new positions, consider pairing Bitcoins with silver. Any money leaving the clutches of the financial terrorists on Wall St. and Washington gets us one step closer to a freer world, free trade and freer currencies. … Read More
Google’s worker paradise
I have been to Google’s headquarters in California, so the notion that the New York offices boast incredible employee perks does not surprise me.But still:And the perks, she added, are “amazing.” In the course of our brief conversation, she mentioned subsidized massages (with massage rooms on nearly every floor); free once-a-week eyebrow shaping; free yoga and Pilates classes; a course she took called “Unwind: the art and science of stress management”; a course in advanced negotiation taught by a Wharton professor; a health consultation and follow-up with a personal health counselor; an author series and an appearance by the novelist Toni Morrison; and a live interview of Justin Bieber by Jimmy Fallon in the Google office.In what universe do Toni Morrison and Justin Bieber get namechecked in the same sentence? And is that really a perk? What happens when you try to concentrate on “Beloved” but the lyrics of Bieber’s “Baby” keep running through your head? Seems to me productivity would fall, directly.Continue Reading… … Read More
Shocker: Eighty percent of NYC graduates unable to read
During his most recent State of the City address, New York CityMayor Michael Bloomberg hyped about the large investment the cityhas made on education – a multi-billion dollar investment thatseems to have done little to help the city’s teens.Critics pointed out that just 13 percent of black and Latinostudents graduate from New York City schools with the skillsrequired for community college – and overall, 80 percent of allgraduates lack these skills.“He will be remembered as the Mayor of Education Failure, andhis final speech ignored that reality. He has harmed ourcommunities and families, and we cannot wait to see a new mayorreplace him,” parent Zakiyah Ansari of New Yorkers for GreatPublic Schools told the New York Daily News.The number of students who lack crucial reading, writing andmath skills is the highest it has been in years, CBS 2 reports.Officials from City University told the news station that 79.3percent of graduates, or 10,700 students, who arrived to take atest to get into community college last year failed and wererequired to relearn basic skills that should have been taught inhigh school. This is a sharp increase from the 71.4 percent whowere lacking the skills in 2007.With such a high number of uneducated students, City Universityhas launched a program to help struggling high school grads. Calledthe CUNY Start, the program provides cheap immersion classes thathelp New York teens catch up with those who are prepared forcollege.“They get lost sometimes in the classroom and in CUNY Startwe give them a lot more one-on-one attention, small groupwork,” Sherry Mason, who teaches a writing class, told CBS.“It helps them achieve more in a short amount of time and sothey’re able to get on with their credit classes.”But students who are forced to shell out $1,000 or more forcourses that bear no college credit are disappointed that theirhigh schools failed to prepare them for college.“The basics that I’m receiving now should have been taught inhigh school,” Feona Wilson, a high school graduate fromBrooklyn, told the New York Post. “It’s more money coming out ofyour pocket.”Despite efforts by lawmakers to improve high school education,the US still lags in comparison to other developed countries. In2012, the US placed 17thin the developed world foreducation, according to a report by Pearson. Finland and SouthKorea topped the lost of 40 countries. But when it comes to math,Americans are in the bottom half, with US students ranking25thout of developing countries.Experts have warned that American students’ comparativelyaverage to low performance could threaten the country’s futureeconomic growth. And with 80 percent of New York’s high schoolgraduates unprepared for community college, Bloomberg’s largeeducation investments appears to have been ineffectively used. … Read More
Sam Lipsyte’s latest: Less than the sum of its “Fun Parts”
PERHAPS NO LITERARY FORM is more a creation of market forces and tradition than the short story. A novel can go on for as many pages as the author needs to finish the tale, and most book reviews clock in under 2,000 words, because, really, who needs more space than that to say whether a book is any good? The modern short story is short, however, because it fills a very specific niche: a tale that can be read in one sitting, first designed to fit the fiction slot in popular periodicals, and now repurposed for use in literary magazines and as a training exercise in creative writing classes. Continue Reading… … Read More
Gates, Zuckerberg and others come together in coding PSA
A number of high-profile members of the technology industry have teamed up with celebrities to back a new initiative designed to get kids interested in programming. The nonprofit foundation Code.org wants to get more schools involved in teaching programming classes while at the same time, directing visitors to coding resources… … Read More
