Opposition 'wins' Honduras poll

BBC NEWS | Americas | Opposition 'wins' Honduras poll: "Opposition candidate Manuel Zelaya has won presidential elections in Honduras, a top local election official has said."

MSN Encarta - Top 10 Odd College Courses

MSN Encarta - Top 10 Odd College Courses: "College courses aren't all Econ 101 and The History of Europe: 1500-Present. A trend among many colleges and universities is to offer courses that are slightly off the beaten track. Many of these courses draw their themes from pop culture or sports, or they may be the brainchildren of professors who want to share their passion with students. They may be no less serious than traditional courses, but they certainly cover new academic ground.

Students take these offbeat courses for a variety of reasons--hoping for an easy A, to try something fun, or to explore a new interest. Underwater Basket Weaving 101 may be an urban legend, but these ten unusual courses are for real:

1) You can boldly go where no other philosophy student has gone before in Georgetown University's 'Philosophy and Star Trek' course, where students discuss the nature of time travel, the ability of computers to think and feel, and other philosophical dilemmas facing the crew of the Starship Enterprise.

2) Discover how Brick really felt when Opal left him for his neighbor's best friend's sister in the University of Wisconsin's course entitled 'Daytime Serials: Family and Social Roles.' Students analyze the plots, themes, and characters of daytime soaps and discuss their impact on modern life.

3) If you've been longing to research how hot dogs, theme parks, and the five-day workweek have impacted American leisure culture, check out the University of Iowa course 'The American Vacation.' This course pays particular attention to how American families' varying backgrounds shape their vacation experiences.

4) Bowdoin College students can delve into 'The Horror Film in Context' in the school's English Department. Students read Freud and Poe and watch Hitchcock and Craven, all while discussing the horror genre's treatment of gender, class, and family.

5) At Williams College, students can learn more about those in the cement shoe industry by enrolling in 'Comparative History of Organized Crime,' which compares the work of goodfellas from the United States, Italy, Japan, and Russia.

6) If you've got a romantic urge for adventure, check out Barnard College's course on 'The Road Movie,' which studies Easy Rider and Thelma and Louise, while also discussing the genre's literary precursors, like On the Road and The Odyssey.

7) If hitting the road doesn't satisfy your rebellious streak, sign up for Brown University's course on 'American Degenerates,' in which students discuss how early British-American writers embraced the grotesque, monstrous, 'not our kind' status bestowed on them by the mother country and reflected their zeal for cultural and physical degeneracy in their literature.

8) Those artsy types at the Rhode Island School of Design can put down their paintbrushes and take 'The Art of Sin and the Sin of Art,' which contemplates the relationship between sin and the art world. The course catalog invites you to 'lust with the saints and burn with the sinners.'

9) If talking about death several times a week in class sounds like a good time to you, try Purdue University's 'Death and the Nineteenth Century' course. Every poem and novel in the course deals with the 19th-century conception of mortality and the world beyond.

10) At Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, students can take 'Art of Walking,' in which students not only read literature by noted perambulators like Kant and Nietzsche, but go for neighborhood strolls with their professor and his dog.

Most college programs offer interesting courses to introduce you to new and fascinating subject matters. Take advantage of the many possibilities offered to you by sitting down with your advisor to talk about course options and then really thinking about the courses you choose to take."

The Education Wonks: The Best School System In The World? - Thoughts And Ideas Freely Exchanged

The Education Wonks: The Best School System In The World? - Thoughts And Ideas Freely Exchanged: "This land of vodka and Nokia phones has more graduates than any other country and its 15-year-olds are the best at solving maths problems, according to the latest education survey by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Juxu and her classmates have no league tables or Sats, they enjoy short school days, free hot lunches, lots of music, art and sport, and 10-week summer holidays. In a country where 60 per cent of the people are university-educated, the children have the world's best education."

The 10 most expensive colleges - Oct. 28, 2005

The 10 most expensive colleges - Oct. 28, 2005: "NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Tuition at the most expensive four-year college is up only 2.7 percent from last year. But a small increase on an already big number is still gob-smacking.

Landmark College, the school with the priciest tuition since at least 1998, is charging $37,738 for tuition this year, according to data from the Chronicle of Higher Education. That's up $11,238, or 42 percent, from 1998.

Of course, not everyone is aiming to go to Landmark, a school in Putney, Vt. that provides a liberal arts education to kids with learning disabilities and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

But the price tag isn't that much lower at the other nine schools that charge the highest tuition.

George Washington University in Washington, D.C. ranks No. 2 with a tuition of $36,400, up 7 percent from last year.

The No. 3 school, the University of Richmond in Virginia, is charging $34,850, up a whopping 31.4 percent from last year."

Top 20 geek novels -- the results! from Guardian Unlimited: Technology

Ah geez, and I've read just about all of them.

Top 20 geek novels -- the results! from Guardian Unlimited: Technology: "Top 20 geek novels -- the results!

By Jack Schofield / Media 06:14am

So far, 132 people have voted for the best geek novels written in English since 1932, in spite of Survey Monkey's rubric saying free polls were limited to 100 responses. The top 20 is therefore as follows, with the numbers in brackets showing the number of votes.

1. The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- Douglas Adams 85% (102)
2. Nineteen Eighty-Four -- George Orwell 79% (92)
3. Brave New World -- Aldous Huxley 69% (77)
4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? -- Philip Dick 64% (67)
5. Neuromancer -- William Gibson 59% (66)
6. Dune -- Frank Herbert 53% (54)
7. I, Robot -- Isaac Asimov 52% (54)
8. Foundation -- Isaac Asimov 47% (47)
9. The Colour of Magic -- Terry Pratchett 46% (46)
10. Microserfs -- Douglas Coupland 43% (44)
11. Snow Crash -- Neal Stephenson 37% (37)
12. Watchmen -- Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons 38% (37)
13. Cryptonomicon -- Neal Stephenson 36% (36)
14. Consider Phlebas -- Iain M Banks 34% (35)
15. Stranger in a Strange Land -- Robert Heinlein 33% (33)
16. The Man in the High Castle -- Philip K Dick 34% (32)
17. American Gods -- Neil Gaiman 31% (29)
18. The Diamond Age -- Neal Stephenson 27% (27)
19. The Illuminatus! Trilogy -- Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson 23% (21)
20. Trouble with Lichen - John Wyndham 21% (19)"

Slashdot | Vatican Rejects Intelligent Design?

Hey, I'm not in Kansas anymore.

Slashdot | Vatican Rejects Intelligent Design?: "A Vatican representative has expressed a defense of the theory of evolution, stating that it is 'perfectly compatible' with the Genesis story of creation. 'The fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim,' he said at a Vatican press conference. He said the real message in Genesis was that 'the universe didn't make itself and had a creator'.' Of course, it'd probably be best if fundmentalists actually talked to, say, the rabbis who wrote the whole thing down. The Orthodox rabbis I've spoken find it amazingly amusing that people take the creation story as literal truth, rather then a story about YHWH's power."

Slashdot | World's Most Powerful Subwoofer

I'm going to run out right now and install one in my car.
Slashdot | World's Most Powerful Subwoofer: "'This $13,000 subwoofer, the TRW 17 from Eminent Technology is billed as the world's most powerful due to its ability to reproduce sounds with frequencies as low as 1Hz. Typical subwoofers bottom out at 20Hz, and while the human ear can barely hear below that point, it is still possible to feel the sound. This particular woofer does not have an enclosure, instead relying on a fan-like design, wafting a cone of modulated air into the room, and effectively turning it into a resonating box, in its entirety!'"

Invention: Coffee beer

Ok... I'll have one for the road.

New Scientist Breaking News - Invention: Coffee beer: "Coffee-beer

A drink somewhere between coffee and beer could soon be on the menu. Nestec, part of the Nestl�empire in Switzerland, has filed patents in every major market round the world on a 'fermented coffee beverage' that pours and foams like beer, but smells of strong coffee and packs a concentrated caffeine kick.

The beverage is made in a similar way to beer, but fine-tuned temperature control stops the formation of ethyl alcohol. So the new drink could go down well with people who want a long tall pick-me-up while driving."

Nestle Patents Coffee Beer

Slashdot | Nestle Patents Coffee Beer: "Dotnaught writes 'New Scientist reports that Nestec, a Nestle subsidiary, has applied for a patent on a fermented coffee beverage. In other words, coffee beer -- it foams like beer and packs the caffeine of coffee, with 'fruity and/or floral notes due to the fermentation of the coffee aroma.'"

Using Copyrights To Fight Intelligent Design

Slashdot | Using Copyrights To Fight Intelligent Design: "An anonymous reader writes 'The National Academies' National Research Council and the National Science Teachers Association are using the power of copyright to ensure that students in Kansas receive a robust education. They're backed by the AAS: The American Association for the Advancement of Science.' From the release: '[they] have decided they cannot grant the Kansas State School Board permission to use substantial sections of text from two standards-related documents: the research council's 'National Science Education Standards' and 'Pathways to Science Standards', published by NSTA. The organizations sent letters to Kansas school authorities on Wednesday, Oct. 26 requesting that their copyrighted material not be used ... Leshner said AAAS backs the decision on copyright permission. 'We need to protect the integrity of science education if we expect the young people of Kansas to be fully productive members of an increasingly competitive world economy that is driven by science and technology ... We cannot allow young people to be denied an appropriate science education simply on ideological grounds.''"