Nov 03, 2009 -
Maybe you're wondering if it's even possible to take a class on iTunes. It is now — and not just from Stanford, but from Yale, Wharton, Berkeley, and more. In a relatively new move, prestigious colleges and universities are making lectures, classes, and even written materials available online.
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Oct 30, 2009 -
When Obama decided not to renew the Title V grant program that funds abstinence-only sex education programs in his 2010 budget, places like McLennan County in Texas found their coffers, already depleted when their $800,000 grant ran out in 2007, dwindle from $1 million to zero.
Since 1997, $1.9 billion in government funding ($1.5 billion of it federal money) has gone to abstinence-only education, turning it into an industry unto itself. Although the Senate Finance Committee voted to restore the funding 12-11 last month, the measure needs to pass the full Congress, which is unlikely.
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Oct 22, 2009 -
I've heard that the key to mental longevity is to always keep your mind open to learning new things. One easy way is to adopt a few new words and use them in your daily conversations. Surely you don't want to sit around all day, flipping through a thesaurus, so let me introduce you to Save the Words.
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Oct 12, 2009 -
- The job crisis is hitting young people just out of college especially hard, which could have a long-term negative impact on an entire generation. — Business Week
- American Elinor Ostrom has become the first woman to win the Nobel prize for economics. — BBC News
- Iraq's National Theater has opened again for the first time in six years, as nightlife begins to return to Baghdad.
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Oct 06, 2009 -
Well-educated women have more to offer than interesting conversations. According to an extensive Swedish study, a woman's education and social status has more impact on her partner's lifespan than his own education.
The study, involving 1.5 million working Swedes, found that a man whose partner only had a high school education had a 25 percent greater risk of dying early than a man whose partner holds a university degree.
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Sep 29, 2009 -
Putting facts — like rising teen pregnancy and STD rates — together with some common sense, Texas school districts are beginning to ditch abstinence-only education programs.
Texas has the third-highest teen pregnancy rate in the US and it also spends the most on abstinence-only education. One school district official explained the decision to step away from an abstinence-only approach:
"We don’t think abstinence-only is working.
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Sep 28, 2009 -
President Obama may be leading our nation, but he's just dad to his daughters, Malia and Sasha. And, his new idea to have longer school days and years is none too popular with them. In addition to adding class time, the commander in chief wants schools to be safe places for children to go in the afternoons and on weekends.
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Sep 24, 2009 -
In an article in the New York Post today, real-life NYU students respond to Gossip Girl's depiction of NYU freshman orientation. What do they think of the show's fictional keg parties on rooftops, characters requesting who they want to room with to the Housing Office, and the notion that NYU is cheaper than Yale? (Here's a Buzz recap of this week's goings-on to refresh your memories!)
Although one blogger gives the thumbs up to the show's reference to an "Art & the World" class he actually took his freshman year at Tisch, another one disses the idea of a rooftop party.
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Sep 24, 2009 -
The middle-school version of ourselves probably had a blurry idea of the adults we would become, but some kids are proving that we knew a lot more about our identities than we thought. With no doubt about who they are attracted to, more and more kids are coming out as gay or bisexual before they make it to high school.
An article in this weekend's New York Times Magazine examines the trend and reveals that many of these kid are coming out before they've ever dated or kissed anyone of either sex.
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Sep 23, 2009 -
Tina Fey captured the essence of high school girl-on-girl cruelty when she wrote the screenplay for Mean Girls. In the movie, Lindsay Lohan's character Cady describes how the queen of mean Regina George ruled her minion Gretchen, in addition to the whole school:
The meaner Regina was to her, the more Gretchen tried to win Regina back. She knew it was better to be in the plastics, hating life, than to not be in at all.
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