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http://www.pravsworld.com/the-miraculous-glasses/

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Ok Go-This Too Shall Pass

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Betsy DeVos is not especially qualified to perform any aspect of her job. The secretary of education got her current gig by donating oodles of cash to Republicans, including many of the senators who voted to confirm her. Her tenure thus far has been a calamity. In her first month on the job, she revoked protections for transgender schoolchildren and praised America's segregated education system. After those early mishaps, DeVos largely retreated from the public eye and has allowed her agency to drift into aimless irrelevance.

Last Thursday, however, DeVos roared back into the spotlight with a trenchant speech promising to overhaul federal rules regarding campus sexual assault. Most progressives understandably rolled their eyes: Given DeVos' glaring inadequacies, it may be difficult to imagine she will approach this topic in good faith or make genuine improvements to the current rules. While this cynicism is perfectly rational, the reality is that our current system is so terrible that DeVos probably can't make it much worse. She may be an unqualified oligarch, but liberals should hear out her proposals before dismissing them out of hand.

DeVos' Thursday speech focused on a federal law, Title IX, which prohibits schools that receive federal funding from discriminating on the basis of sex. Sexual abuse and harassment qualify as sex discrimination, and universities that fail to properly prevent and address sexual violence may lose their funding or be sued by victims. In 1997, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights promulgated guidelines explaining how universities should evaluate and respond to sexual harassment on campus. These instructions included a broad outline of "prompt and equitable grievance procedures" that institutions should use when students report sexual abuse.

In 2011, OCR issued a "Dear Colleague" letter laying out more specific rules for campus sexual assault investigations. The OCR letter asserted that universities must use a "preponderance of the evidence" standard to evaluate guilt, meaning the accused must be disciplined if a fact-finder is 51 percent certain he is guilty. The letter also stated that schools should allow a student to appeal if her alleged abuser is found not guilty. Moreover, OCR discouraged schools from allowing the accused to cross-examine accusers because this experience "may be traumatic or intimidating" to the alleged victim. Finally, the letter clarified that schools canforbid the accused from using a lawyer throughout the Title IX process.

The core problem with Title IX, as interpreted by the OCR in 2011, is that it strips any semblance of due process from the accused.

OCR later claimed that this guidance letter merely "reminded" schools of their Title IX obligations. In reality, however, it imposed stringent new requirements upon schools and sharply limited the rights of the accused. Universities quickly adopted the letter's procedures, often to disastrous effect. DeVos detailed some of the most egregious injustices in her Thursday speech, while a recent article by the Atlantic's Emily Yoffe details how universities' Title IX hearings have become kangaroo courts. And Laura Kipnis' new book Unwanted Advancesvividly illustrates how students can use current Title IX rules to retaliate against innocent professors.

The core problem with Title IX, as interpreted by the OCR in 2011, is that it strips any semblance of due process from the accused. In criminal proceedings, due process encompasses the right to an attorney, the right to cross-examine accusers and witnesses, protections against double jeopardy, and the presumption of innocence. The 2011 letter jettisoned these safeguards because disciplinary proceedings are not criminal; the most a school can do is expel a student. But expulsion is a serious penalty that interrupts students' lives, tarnishes their academic record, and diminishes their future job opportunities. And the Constitution does afford at least some due process protections for public university students. Shouldn't Title IX procedures ensure that students and professors accused of sexual misconduct are given a real opportunity to defend themselves?

A concern for due process is not an inherently partisan issue, and it's not just conservatives who have objected to the new regime. A number professors from top law schools have urged OCR to revise Title IX rules. Liberal law faculty have also exhorted their schools to reintroduce fairness into disciplinary proceedings. On Friday, feminist law professor and contributor Lara Bazelon cautiously praised DeVos' effort to "get it right," and Harvard Law's Jeannie Suk Gersen, also a liberal feminist, lauded her for "proceeding exactly as an agency head should." Both writers offer some eminently reasonable reforms: Raise the standard of proof to "clear and convincing evidence"; allow cross-examination of witnesses; provide the accused with an advocate; and create an independent appellate process. These should not be objectionable proposals.

But for the broader American left, the deck is already stacked against DeVos-and for good reason. The president who appointed her has bragged about committing sexual assault, and DeVos herself has met with "men's rights activists" who dismiss claims of sexual abuse. More troublingly, Candice Jackson, the acting head of OCR, has claimed that "90 percent" of campus rape accusations "fall into the category" of "we were both drunk" and "she just decided that our last sleeping together was not quite right." Jackson quickly apologized, but her comment indicated an unjustified skepticism toward assault victims that could infect the office's investigations.

So, no, DeVos and her staffers are not the people whom progressives would choose to rewrite Title IX rules. But the fact remains that the current regime is broken and that DeVos has an opportunity to fix it. Liberals have plenty of reasons to distrust her, but they shouldn't reject her stab at reform without hearing what she has to offer. Nor should they bemoan the demise of the 2011 guidelines. Those rules deserved to die. It's just unfortunate that DeVos has to be the one to kill them.

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Betsy DeVos Is Right: Colleges Do Trample on the Rights of Accused Sexual Assailants

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Betsy DeVos is not especially qualified to perform any aspect of her job. The secretary of education got her current gig by donating oodles of cash to Republicans, including many of the senators who voted to confirm her. Her tenure thus far has been a calamity.

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https://m.youtube.com/results?q=the%20piano%20guys%20that's%20what%20makes%20you%20beautiful%20&sm=1

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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uZfRaWAtBVghttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uZfRaWAtBVg

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UK-fcfalsw
Kirk Nugent Video

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-riNhZTiyY
research shows music helps to increase endurance

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWwFBGOBAQI
A rap about poetic devices using those same devices when explaining them

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http://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/this-teachers-neat-but-extremely-gross-experiment-for-her-students-has-gone-viral/

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Ten Ways to Cultivate a Love of Reading in Students

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Ten Ways to Cultivate a Love of Reading in Students

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https://www.edutopia.org/blog/cultivating-love-reading-students-elena-aguilar

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To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltun92DfnPY

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuCG3hwUqYs

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David Foster Wallace describes the experience of watching Roger Federer live.
-Austin Walker

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Roger Federer as Religious Experience - Tennis - The New York Times

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https://vimeo.com/128292930

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Some infinities are greater than other infinities. 

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Some infinities are greater than other infinities. 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skM37PcZmWE

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Understand that life is not a straight line. Life is not a set timeline of milestones. It is okay if you don't finish school, get married, find a job that supports you, have a family, make money, and live comfortably all by this age, or that age. It's okay if you do, as long as you understand that if you're not married by 25, or a Vice President by 30 - or even happy, for that matter - the world isn't going to condemn you. You are allowed to backtrack. You are allowed to figure out what inspires you. You are allowed time, and I think we often forget that. We choose a program right out of high school because the proper thing to do is to go straight to University. We choose a job right out of University, even if we didn't love our program, because we just invested time into it. We go to that job every morning because we feel the need to support ourselves abundantly. We take the next step, and the next step, and the next step, thinking that we are fulfilling some checklist for life, and one day we wake up depressed. We wake up stressed out. We feel pressured and don't know why. That is how you ruin your life.

You ruin your life by choosing the wrong person. What is it with our need to fast-track relationships? Why are we so enamored with the idea of first becoming somebody's rather than somebodies? Trust me when I say that a love bred out of convenience, a love that blossoms from the need to sleep beside someone, a love that caters to our need for attention rather than passion, is a love that will not inspire you at 6am when you roll over and embrace it. Strive to discover foundational love, the kind of relationship that motivates you to be a better man or woman, the kind of intimacy that is rare rather than right there. "But I don't want to be alone," we often exclaim. Be alone. Eat alone, take yourself on dates, sleep alone. In the midst of this you will learn about yourself. You will grow, you will figure out what inspires you, you will curate your own dreams, your own beliefs, your own stunning clarity, and when you do meet the person who makes your cells dance, you will be sure of it, because you are sure of yourself. Wait for it. Please, I urge you to wait for it, to fight for it, to make an effort for it if you have already found it, because it is the most beautiful thing your heart will experience.

You ruin your life by letting your past govern it. It is common for certain things in life to happen to you. There will be heartbreak, confusion, days where you feel like you aren't special or purposeful. There are moments that will stay with you, words that will stick. You cannot let these define you - they were simply moments, they were simply words. If you allow for every negative event in your life to outline how you view yourself, you will view the world around you negatively. You will miss out on opportunities because you didn't get that promotion five years ago, convincing yourself that you were stupid. You will miss out on affection because you assumed your past love left you because you weren't good enough, and now you don't believe the man or the woman who urges you to believe you are. This is a cyclic, self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don't allow yourself to move past what happened, what was said, what was felt, you will look at your future with that lens, and nothing will be able to breach that judgment. You will keep on justifying, reliving, and fueling a perception that shouldn't have existed in the first place.

You ruin your life when you compare yourself to others. The amount of Instagram followers you have does not decrease or increase your value. The amount of money in your bank account will not influence your compassion, your intelligence, or your happiness. The person who has two times more possessions than you does not have double the bliss, or double the merit. We get caught up in what our friends are liking, who our significant others are following, and at the end of the day this not only ruins our lives, but it also ruins us. It creates within us this need to feel important, and in many cases we often put others down to achieve that.

You ruin your life by desensitizing yourself. We are all afraid to say too much, to feel too deeply, to let people know what they mean to us. Caring is not synonymous with crazy. Expressing to someone how special they are to you will make you vulnerable. There is no denying that. However, that is nothing to be ashamed of. There is something breathtakingly beautiful in the moments of smaller magic that occur when you strip down and are honest with those who are important to you. Let that girl know that she inspires you. Tell your mother you love her in front of your friends. Express, express, express. Open yourself up, do not harden yourself to the world, and be bold in who, and how, you love. There is courage in that.

You ruin your life by tolerating it. At the end of the day you should be excited to be alive. When you settle for anything less than what you innately desire, you destroy the possibility that lives inside of you, and in that way you cheat both yourself and the world of your potential. The next Michelangelo could be sitting behind a Macbook right now writing an invoice for paperclips, because it pays the bills, or because it is comfortable, or because he can tolerate it. Do not let this happen to you. Do not ruin your life this way. Life and work, and life and love, are not irrespective of each other. They are intrinsically linked. We have to strive to do extraordinary work, we have to strive to find extraordinary love. Only then will we tap into an extraordinarily blissful life.
Want more writing like this? Check out Bianca Sparacino's book Seeds Planted in Concrete.
Read Seeds Planted In Concrete here.

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How To Ruin Your Life (Without Even Noticing That You Are)

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Understand that life is not a straight line. Life is not a set timeline of milestones. It is okay if you don't finish school, get married, find a job that supports you, have a family, make money, and live comfortably all by this age, or that age.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0qD2K2RWkc&t=12s

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https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-taken I chose to use this poem because it can start a lot of open ended questions and also elicit creativity through writing.

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Venezuelan President Cancels Gustavo Dudamel's Youth Orchestra Tour To U.S.

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Venezuelan President Cancels Gustavo Dudamel's Youth Orchestra Tour To U.S.

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http://n.pr/2vViwkd

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/magazine/what-americans-wrote-to-obama.html?mcubz=0

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-gQLqv9f4o

This is kid president and I love this because it is great for all ages. In my opinion, this video raises confidence and motivates those who watch it.

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<iframe src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FMLBNetwork%2Fvideos%2F10154424929286695%2F&show_text=0&width=560"
Feel like this one thing or event defines you? Don't let it! Use your support system and optimism and things will work out.

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http://www.advanc-ed.org/source/importance-agricultural-education-and-ffa
Article written by Jaclyn Ryan, 2015 Virginia Teacher of the Year, on why Ag Education should be taught in schools.

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https://youtu.be/M0NoOtaFrEs