When Salem schools send home information to parents here, it’s supposed to go out in both English and Spanish. Often that happens, but not always.

Now, school administrators are redoubling their efforts to do so as part of a new plan to reach out to Latino parents and get them more involved in the public schools.

“We’re doing a lot with school improvement and parent engagement in general,” said Mayor Kim Driscoll, who chairs the School Committee.

“Latino families want to participate, and we want them to be part of this discussion, too. … If we want to be engaged with our Latino families, we need to make that as easy and as comfortable as possible. Translation is key if we want parents to be involved.”

Last week, the city’s newly formed Latino Leadership Coalition hosted a forum — conducted entirely in Spanish — to inform parents and answer questions on the pressing issues facing the schools this year. It was well-attended and productive, said Rosario Ubiera-Minaya, a member of the coalition and a Bowditch School parent.

The Latino coalition, an outgrowth of the Salem Education Foundation, formed this month and hopes to host two forums a month like the one last week, Ubiera-Minaya said.

“We felt that, as a whole, the Latino community was not informed on what was going on,” she said. “… Our primary goal is to focus on the inclusion of the Latino community, to serve as a vehicle to share information and ideas, and to empower Latinos to have a voice.”

Roughly 35 to 40 percent of Salem’s public school population is Latino, a number that has increased within the last five years, Driscoll said.

More information here

You may think language is sexist. Let us take a closer look at sexism and machismo in language.

When someone tells us about Mr. Johnson, we do not know whether the man is single or married. If we are told something about Mrs. Smith, we gather she is married. And when we hear that Miss McGuire is beautiful we are certain she is single. In the fifties Ms. came on the linguistic stage as a title of respect which did not indicate a woman’s marital status. Its usage is varied: widespread in business, rejected by some newspaper editors and waved like a banner by champions of women’s rights.

We all know that if a lawyer wishes to make money, he must work hard. Seldom will we hear she. The awkward he/she just won’t do.

Lawyer, teacher, friend, nurse, writer, for example, do not indicate gender. We always assume that secretaries and nurses are female, but we often err. We only had mailmen, policemen, firemen and chairmen. Not any more. To paraphrase Cervantes again: In the language of yesteryear, there are new words this year.

Language is not sexist, society is

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I have just opened the best friend for discussions, Mr. Dr. Sir Almighty Google… Sometimes I am kinda confused… And when I’m confused I’m looking for ‘Backup’ in the biggest information base….

So, I have entered into the Google ‘How to Know If You…’ and the Almighty new the question already…:) How to know if u r in love. OK. Than I stopped. I am confused in confuse….Is it such a global question? How many people per day are asking for that?…. And how many people are trying to answer?… Does he like me? Does she think I’m a nice one? How to know if I have a chance?…

It’s funny. We always know the answer, but we are looking for it in a wrong way,.. We all know how it is. Or at least why MAY know how it is…but not discussing it with google! We should ask ourselves. Or Her. Or Him. But not Sky, Dreams, Horoscopes, Bed, Forest, Pillow, Diary…. Ask Her. Him. Yourself…

Don’t forget, that we live once…. It should be our experience, not Google’s.

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — NASA’s Dawn spacecraft was captured into orbit around the massive asteroid Vesta after a 1.7 billion-mile journey and is preparing to begin a study of a surface that may date to the earliest era of the solar system, the space agency said Monday.
The entry into orbit occurred while the spacecraft’s antenna was pointed away from Earth, so mission controllers had to wait for Dawn to re-establish contact to confirm its success.
The capture was estimated to have occurred at 10 p.m. PDT Friday, when Dawn was 9,900 miles from Vesta and 117 million miles from Earth in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, according to a statement from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“We are beginning the study of arguably the oldest extant primordial surface in the solar system,” the mission’s principal investigator, Christopher Russell from the University of California, Los Angeles, said in the statement.
NASA said that after the orbital capture, Dawn sent an initial close-up image taken for navigation purposes. Before the Dawn mission, images of Vesta were obtained by ground- and space-based telescopes but did not show much surface detail.
Vesta, 330 miles in diameter, is the second-most massive object in the asteroid belt and is believed to be the source of many meteorites that fall to Earth.
Dawn will continue to approach Vesta over the next three weeks, search for possible moons and make more navigation images. It begins gathering science data in August. Vesta’s gravitational pull on Dawn will be measured to more accurately determine the asteroid’s mass.
The spacecraft will eventually get as close as 110 miles from the surface.
Dawn was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in 2007 and used an ion propulsion system to reach Vesta. Ion engines provide gentle yet constant acceleration to achieve high speeds.
The spacecraft will study Vesta for a year and then continue on to the most massive object in the main asteroid belt, the “dwarf planet” Ceres. That encounter is scheduled to occur in February 2015.
JPL is managing the $466 million mission for NASA. UCLA is responsible for the mission’s science. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute also have roles in the mission.

Somali pirates may be terrorizing the waters off of East Africa, but maybe they should pick their targets a little more carefully and stop targeting European warships.

Earlier today, some Somali pirates got a little too greedy and attacked the Spanish warship serving as the flagship for the European Union’s fleet of ships carrying out a counter-piracy mission off of Somalia.

Somali pirates

Needless to say, it wasn’t a fair fight.

At first light Thursday, the Spanish warship ESPS Patino had just completed escorting a ship carrying food aid into the Somali capital of Mogadishu. In addition to a counter-piracy effort, the EU’s main mission is to escort freighters carrying food from the World Food Programme.

That’s when a skiff carrying six pirates sped towards the warship and the pirates began to fire their light-caliber weapons at the ship in an attemp to board it.

The Patino’s crew immediately began to fire back in self-defense and launched the ship’s helicopter.

The pirates realized they were outgunned and broke away from the attack, but eventually surrendered to the helicopter. But only after first throwing their weapons, ladder and fuel barrels overboard.

Somali pirates often dump their weapons into the ocean in an attempt to avoid detention.

Five of the pirates were injured and two required medical treatment on board the Patino. The crew of the Spanish warship is also looking into the pirates’ claim that another pirate was lost overboard during the attack.

Somali Pirates

Taking on a warship might sound like a unique event but, amazingly, this isn’t the first time that Somali pirates have taken on a warship.

In October 2009, a group of pirates attempted to take on the French warship BCR Somme about 250 miles off the coast of Somalia.

They met a similar fate to the pirates involved in today’s incident and were detained after their unsuccessful attack.

Search for “long volleyball rally” on YouTube and you’ll get back results of videos lasting anywhere from 29 to 90 seconds. And then there’s this clip from a recent Chinese volleyball game in which two women’s teams engage in an unbelievable two-minute rally that’s so exciting, it makes you wonder why volleyball isn’t more popular worldwide:

I never used to watch this sport on the telly, now all I can do is watch Chinese women play volleyball!

Shawnee Mission East teen Emma Sullivan insulted Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback over Twitter while on a school field trip to the state capitol last week.

Emma Sullivan, the tweeting high school senior

“Just made mean comments at gov. brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot,” she wrote to her 60 followers who tuned in to her sporadic updates about the Twilight films and Justin Bieber. In fact, Sullivan hadn’t said a word to the governor during his brief speech, and she now says the Twitter comment was just an “inside joke” among her high schol friends who were also on the Youth in Government field trip and disagreed with Brownback’s politics.

But the humor was lost on members of Brownback’s staff, who found the tweet while scouring social media sites for his name and alerted Sullivan’s high school principal. The principal reprimanded Sullivan and demanded she write an apology to the governor.

Sullivan says he better not hold his breath. After originally acquiescing to her principal’s request, the 18-year-old took her story to Kansas papers and news stations–and now to national outlets–and has changed her mind.

“He was very angry, right off the bat,” Sullivan said of her principal, Karl Krawitz. “He was extremely scared about it. He made it very clear that he wasn’t happy.”

Sullivan agreed to write the apology letter “to get it out of the way,” she says. “I didn’t want to deal with it because I’m in the process of applying to school and am trying to keep my reputation good.”

But she soon thought the better of it, after calling her older sister, Olivia, who is a political science major at Wichita State University and is now managing her flood of interview requests. “I wasn’t sorry for what I said because I meant it,” Sullivan says. She disagrees with Brownback, a Republican, on rights for gay couples and abortion rights, among other things.

And while Sullivan’s tweet is still rude, Brownback’s staff response makes him look thin-skinned and unable to take a joke. “I can’t believe they would prioritize that over other issues they have going on now,” Sullivan says. “I can’t believe they take time out of their day to look at social media and Twitter for his name.”

Hundreds of people have left negative comments on Brownback’s Facebook Thanksgiving message. “The imperial Gov needs to go to the school, apologize to the assembled students and then apologize in person to the young lady,” one person wrote.

In a comment to the Kansas City Star last week, Brownback’s communications director stood behind the decision to notify Sullivan’s principal. “That wasn’t respectful,” Sherriene Jones-Sontag told the paper. “In order to really have a constructive dialogue, there has to be mutual respect.”

But Brownback submitted a statement Monday afternoon to Yahoo! News

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback

apologizing to the teen. “My staff over-reacted to this tweet, and for that I apologize. Freedom of speech is among our most treasured freedoms,” he said. Jones-Sontag told Yahoo! that the governor has no plans to personally reach out to Sullivan.

Sullivan, who now has more than 9,000 Twitter followers and has begun quoting Gandhi, says she hopes the principal will accept her decision not write an apology letter. She says the incident has been a “reality check” to her and her friends that their comments on social media sites are not anonymous nor consequence-free.

“It would be nice to kind of talk to the governor and let him know where I’m at and say things, let my opinion be heard and tell him that he needs to listen to more people in Kansas,” Sullivan says. “There needs to be an open door for more people to speak their opinion and be heard by him.”

Update: Gov. Brownback’s statement apologizing to Sullivan has been added to this story. His full statement is below:

“My staff over-reacted to this tweet, and for that I apologize. Freedom of speech is among our most treasured freedoms. I enjoyed speaking to the more than 100 students who participated in the Youth in Government Program at the Kansas Capitol. They are our future. I also want to thank the thousands of Kansas educators who remind us daily of our liberties, as well as the values of civility and decorum. Again, I apologize for our over-reaction”

Isn´t it amazing how fast people try to resind the right of free speech when what you´re saying is uncomfortable or contrary to their beliefs or opinions. She was right to not apologize for her opinion.

As one of the first professional symphony orchestras ever Copenhagen Phil (Sjællands Symfoniorkester) did a flash mob at Copenhagen Central Station on May 2nd 2011 playing Ravel’s Bolero. Conductor is Jesper Nordin.

Members of the world-famous Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra gathered at the largest train station in Denmark to surprise travelers with a flash rendition of Ravel’s Bolero.

It begins with a lone snare drummer and a flutist. A violinist and cellist join in, followed by a bassoon and an oboe and, before you know it, the train station is filled with a full symphony orchestra playing an amazing free concert. How amazing would it be to have been there? Wow.

Denmark on Saturday became the first country in the world to impose a fat tax after a week in which consumers hoarded butter, pizza, meat and milk to avoid the immediate effects.

“We have had to stock up with tonnes of butter and margarine in order to be able to supply outlets,” Soeren Joergensen of Arla Distribution told AFP.

The new tax, designed by Denmark’s outgoing government as a health issue to limit the population’s intake of fatty foods, will add 16 kroner ($2.87, 2.15 euros) per kilo (2.2 pounds) of saturated fatsin a product.

This means an increase in the price of a pack of 250 grammes of butter, for example, by 2.20 kroner to more than 18 kroner.

“It has been a chaotic week with a lot of empty shelves. People have been filling their freezers,” Christian Jensen of an independent local Copenhagen supermarket told AFP.

“But actually I don’t think the tax will make that much difference. If people want to buy a cake, they will buy it. But right now they’re saving money,” he added.

The new tax will be levied on all products including saturated fats — from butter and milk to pizzas, oils, meats and pre-cooked foods — in a costing system that Denmark’s Confederation of Industries (DI) says is a bureaucratic nightmare for producers and outlets.

“The way that this has been put together is an administrative nightmare, and I doubt whether it will give better health. It’s more just a tax,” DI foodstuffs spokeswoman Gitte Hestehave told AFP, adding that the costs of levying the tax would be passed on to consumers.

Hestehave said that setting prices on domestically produced or imported goods was complicated, as it required declarations from producers both as to how much saturated fat was in the product itself, and used in its preparation.

Computer systems all had to be adjusted, adding many man-hours to administrative tasks for producers and sellers.

“Products that include other products that include saturated fats also have to have new prices worked out. Imported goods require a declaration from the producers abroad on exactly how much saturated fat has been used in production,” Hestehave said.

“As far as we have been able to determine, Denmark is the first country in the world to introduce a fat tax” but we know that other countries are following us closely and have their own plans, she said.

The new Danish tax, however, may not last long.

EU legal expert Jeppe Rosenmejer of the Danish Federation of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises says the European Union is currently studying the tax as there may be a competition issue.

While producers in Denmark have to pay the tax at source, for imported goods it is calculated by the distributor.

“This can mean that imported goods will be cheaper than domestically produced items,” Rosenmejer told the national Jyllands-Posten daily.

A Danish producer will have to pay the tax on all of the saturated fat used, including for example what a product is fried in, he said. An importer may only be paying according to what is actually in the finished product.

“Hopefully the tax will be short-lived,” Rosenmejer said.

The right-wing government that decided on the tax was superceded by a centre-left administration in elections last month.

You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America’s Cup, France is accusing the U.S. of arrogance, Germany doesn’t want to go to war, and the three most powerful men in America are named ‘Bush’, ‘Dick’, and ‘Colon’. Need I say more?

"Go ahead, make my day"

Why we like one-liners, we identify with the irony of it, maybe there´s an obvious truth to it, you may be offended by it, but a one-liner´s effect all depends on a person´s taste.

I don’t suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.

Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.

Deja Vu – When you think you’re doing something you’ve done before, it’s because God thought it was so funny, he had to rewind it for his friends.

Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

I don’t have an attitude problem. You have a perception problem.

One-lners are part of our everyday life, in movies, we identify with a character´s one-liners,we expect one-liners from our heroes, a sign of courage in the face of danger, a flavor for our sensibilities, we love to repeat them, or apply them to our lives.

We like one-liners because they´re funny, and we all need to laugh, even if it´s at ourselves once in awhile.

Why is it that most nudists are people you don’t want to see naked?

If you can stay calm while all around you is chaos, then you probably haven’t completely understood the situation.

If you can’t convince them, confuse them.

You know, they got a luggage store in the airport? A place to buy a piece of luggage? How late do you have to be for a flight where you’re like, ‘Fuck it – just grab a pile of shit. We’ll get a bag at the airport’.

These are not even from the top 100, I figured you´d seen most of them, so…until next time