Major University Holding Separate Graduation Ceremonies Based on Race, Income, Sexual Orientation Western Journal | March 16, 2021 | Jack Davis
When Columbia University in New York City holds its virtual graduation ceremonies for the Class of 2021, it wants to be sure that there are separate ones for certain identity groups.
“Complementing our school- and University-wide ceremonies, these events provide a more intimate setting for students and guests to gather, incorporate meaningful cultural traditions and celebrate the specific contributions and achievements of their communities,” the Ivy League university said in announcing a series of graduation ceremonies designed for those groups Columbia has deemed special.
The ceremonies begin with one for Native Americans on April 25. Next comes what is called “Lavender Graduation” to spotlight the “LGBTQIA+ community” on April 26.
On April 27, the university will hold a ceremony for Asian students, followed by one for low-income students and those who are the first generation in their family to graduate from college.
The series of racially profiled ceremonies continues April 29 with one for Hispanic students — billed as “Latinx Graduation” to reflect current liberal language — and concludes April 30 with a ceremony for black graduates.
I know you want to know. Cause if you don’t some of youse isn’t gonna be commenting no more. Capisce?
Seriously though, I’ve been picking up new youtube channels to subscribe to and I thought I would share one with you. Check it out and maybe subscribe yourself.
This particular channel plays various video games and offers some pretty good MST3K commentary or some really outlandish game misplaying. I shan’t explain further, check it out and see for yourself.
This is the first part of a 23 part series going through the game. The videos are about 20 minutes long or so.
City student passes 3 classes in four years, ranks near top half of class with 0.13 GPA Fox 5 | 3/1/21
A shocking discovery out of a Baltimore City high school, where Project Baltimore has found hundreds of students are failing. It’s a school where a student who passed three classes in four years, ranks near the top half of his class with a 0.13 grade point average.
Tiffany France thought her son would receive his diploma this coming June. But after four years of high school, France just learned, her 17-year-old must start over. He’s been moved back to ninth grade.
As we dig deeper into her son’s records, we can see in his first three years at Augusta Fells, he failed 22 classes and was late or absent 272 days. But in those three years, only one teacher requested a parent conference, which France says never happened. No one from the school told France her son was failing and not going to class.
“He’s stressed and I am too. I told him I’m probably going to start crying. I don’t know what to do for him,” France told Project Baltimore. “Why would he do three more years in school? He didn’t fail, the school failed him. The school failed at their job. They failed. They failed, that’s the problem here. They failed. They failed. He didn’t deserve that.”
France’s son attends Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts in west Baltimore. His transcripts show he’s passed just three classes in four years, earning 2.5 credits, placing him in ninth grade. But France says she didn’t know that until February. She has three children and works three jobs. She thought her oldest son was doing well because even though he failed most of his classes, he was being promoted. His transcripts show he failed Spanish I and Algebra I but was promoted to Spanish II and Algebra II. He also failed English II but was passed on to English III.
“I’m just assuming that if you are passing, that you have the proper things to go to the next grade and the right grades, you have the right credits,” said France.
Regarding the first sentence: please define “shocking.”
Do you have something you’d like to share? A link? A joke? Some words of wisdom? A topic to discuss? It’s our nightly Open Thread, and you have the floor.
150,000 Men, 900 Ships: Excavation Reveals Size of Antony & Cleopatra’s Fleet WarHistoryOnline | May 12, 2019
The battle of Actium, which took place off of the west coast of Greece on September 2, 31 B.C., is widely regarded as the decisive moment at which the Roman Republic fell and the Roman Empire rose in its place following the assassination of Julius Caesar.
Octavian, the adopted son and great-nephew of Caesar, faced off against the combined forces of Egypt, led by Cleopatra and Mark Antony, who had been a close friend of the late Caesar.
Octavian’s fleet of 500 ships and 70,000 infantry faced off against Antony and Cleopatra’s combined 400 ships and 80,000 infantry.
Naval historians have studied the battle extensively, curious about the effect that Octavian’s smaller ships might have played in ensuring their decisive victory over the comparatively larger ships which made up Antony and Cleopatra’s fleet.
Now, a recent archaeological discovery has helped to shed light on exactly how much of an advantage this gave the Roman commander.
[Antony’s] underwater battering rams, designed to break down harbor defenses [but primarily to destroy enemy ships — Oppo], were considerably larger than any that had been previously found.
Although only remnants of the rams themselves were discovered in the excavated ruin (it is assumed that later generations or invading forces stole them and melted them down for bronze), the size of the niches they were placed in led historians to estimate that Antony and Cleopatra sailed in ships as large as 40 metres long.
Paris Underestimated French Polynesia Nuclear Testing Fallout, Report Says Sputniknews.com | 3/9/21
I wouldn’t go to the site if I were you. It behaved awfully wobbly for me, and it has that Russian-collusion-sounding name — but I did like the photos and the French-bashing.
Hi, French Polynesia. Want some more of this? OK:
The Mururoa Files! — A Compelling Name for a TV Miniseries, If Ever I Heard One.
In 2019, Paris admitted that its nuclear testing in French Polynesia between 1966 and 1996 damaged the health of the local population.
France underestimated the harmful effects of its nuclear tests in French Polynesia, conducted in the 1960s and the 1970s, new research has revealed.
The study was jointly carried out by the investigative journalism website Disclose and Princeton University, with the research concluding that the impact of the Aldébaran, Encelade, and Centaure tests carried out in 1966, 1971, and 1974, respectively, was much more serious than officially acknowledged.
The conclusions were compiled in the so-called The Mururoa Files, in which researchers scrupulously reconstructed the three tests and their fallout on the basis of key data from 2,000 pages of declassified French Defence Ministry documents, maps, photos, and other records.
“The state has tried hard to bury the toxic heritage of these tests. This is the first truly independent scientific attempt to measure the scale of the damage and to acknowledge the thousands of victims of France’s nuclear experiment in the Pacific”, Geoffrey Livolsi, Disclose’s editor-in-chief, pointed out.
The researchers calculated that the entire population of Tahiti and the Polynesian Leeward Islands, or about 110,000 people, was exposed to a radiation dose of more than 1mSv due to the Centaure test.
According to the survey, France underestimated the contamination on Tahiti by at least 40%, potentially enabling tens of thousands more people to be officially recognised as test victims who can claim compensation.
The study also asserted that the actual radiation doses experienced by the residents of some districts of French Polynesia’s capital Papeete were two or three times higher than those recorded in a 2006 study released by France’s Atomic Energy Commission (CEA).
The study comes after France’s National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) released a report in February related to the consequences of the tests. Inserm argued it “could not conclude with certainty” that there was a link between the tests and the multiple cases of cancer registered in French Polynesia as it underscored the need “to refine dose estimates.”
Between 1966 and 1996, France conducted 193 nuclear tests on the Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls in French Polynesia, including 46 atmospheric blasts. It wasn’t until May 2019, however, that the French parliament acknowledged the health consequences of the nuclear testing in the area.
. . . and yet it’s Pepe le Pew they’re all concerned about.
