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Pew Research Center: Lake Wobegon, U.S.A.

Lake Wobegon, U.S.A.
Where All the Children Are Above Average - At Least by Their Schools' Ways of Counting
by Pauline Vu, Stateline.org Staff Writer
January 31, 2007

State of the States

When her son came home from middle school with a report card showing he'd passed North Carolina's year-end algebra test, Margaret Carnes believed he had the foundation he needed for high school. Then she met with his teacher, who cautioned her not to be too confident. By the state's yardstick, students had to answer correctly fewer than half the questions to pass. In some grades, they can flub two-thirds of the questions and still be marked "proficient."

It can be a harsh wake-up call for children and parents alike. Students are told they are where they're supposed to be academically, but a rude awakening awaits them in high school. "It compels one to ask the question, Have they been prepared?" said Carnes, now managing director for Charlotte Advocates for Education, a nonprofit group pushing for higher state standards.

It's a problem of long standing in U.S. public education. While international assessments confirm that American students lag behind those in several other countries in science and math, many school districts and states keep telling parents that their children, like those in Lake Wobegon, Garrison Keillor's hometown of fable, are all above average.

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He's walking in Gandhi's footsteps...

He wants to be a voice for the voiceless. If he is elected to the French Presidency, this will give Americans one more reason to hate the French.

He's walking in Gandhi's footsteps in his own way. There isn't any personal ambition about him. Champion of the oppressed takes on greatest challenge - the French presidency

Angelique Chrisafis
Friday February 2, 2007
The Guardian

He is the walrus-moustached farmer whose fight against McDonald's and globalisation saw him hailed as a modern-day Asterix leading the Gauls. But José Bové yesterday left his sheep farm in southern France, strolled into a labour exchange in a rundown north Paris suburb, took a draw on his trademark pipe and announced he was running for president.

The self-styled country bumpkin who rose to stardom in 1999 for dismantling a half-built McDonald's in the fight against "crap food" is now coming to the rescue of the riot-hit concrete jungles of France's urban housing estates. "I will be the spokesman of the voiceless," he announced yesterday.

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Waiting for the DDT tide to turn

Findings like these provide teaching opportunities for those who suggest dumping chemical compounds onto our lands. A "safe" product 50 years ago is continuing to bio-accumulate in fish populations 35 years after being banned.

-craig

Federal study shows that fish caught off L.A. County still contain the world's highest levels of the pesticide 35 years after it was banned.
By Marla Cone, Times Staff Writer

January 28, 2007
Fish consumption recommendations
(Acrobat file)

Many fish caught off Los Angeles County still contain extremely high levels of DDT, a sign that anglers and consumers remain at risk and that the ocean's ecosystem may be far from recovery 35 years after the pesticide was banned.

Newly released data from a federal survey indicate that fish caught in the area contained the world's highest-known DDT concentrations. Among 1,200 fish caught from Ventura to Dana Point, white croaker off San Pedro and the Palos Verdes Peninsula were the most highly contaminated. Fish off Orange County and areas north of the Redondo Beach Pier had low concentrations.

The data, collected primarily in 2002, offer the most comprehensive look at the scope of contamination from a 100-ton deposit of DDT that still covers several square miles of the ocean floor decades after the pesticide flowed into county sewers beginning in the late 1940s.

More recent annual sampling by Los Angeles County, far less extensive than the federal survey, suggests that the DDT levels in fish may be improving but still far exceed safe levels.

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U.N. Says There's No Stopping Global Warming

In the strongest language it has ever used, a United Nations panel says
global warming is "very likely" caused by human activities and has
become a runaway train that cannot be stopped.

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