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Alzheimer's is a condition commonly found in elderly people which causes them problems with memory, language, disorientation, and behavioral issues. However, it appears that keeping the brain active can be protective against Alzheimer's. As we grow older, we settle into long-term sequential routines which do not require very much mental stimulation. However, by trying and learning new things throughout our lives, a more synchronous lifestyle, we can keep our brains more active and less susceptible to Alzheimer's

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There are 2 kinds of cooks. One who finds a recipe in a book/online, gets specific ingredients for that recipe, uses exact measurements, and follows the recipe very closely. This is a sequential kind of person because they do things orderly. On the other hand there is the kind of cook who does not use a recipe and improvises with whatever they have in the fridge, buys ingredients spontaneously, and uses eyeballed measurements. This kind of person is more synchronous because of their spontaneity.

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School of Engineering's Decision to only have 1 Commencement Ceremony per Year

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School of Engineering's Decision to only have 1 Commencement Ceremony per Year

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Recently, the Dean of the Cockrell School of Engineering announced a decision to not hold fall graduation in 2018 and onward. I feel like this decision is sequential in nature because the Dean said "Only in the spring do we hold a comprehensive ceremony for all graduates — filled with fireworks and recognition from the president, provost and deans under the UT Tower." It at least makes graduation less synchronous because students who have circumstances in which they can graduate after the fall semester no longer have the flexibility to do so.

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In this scene from the live-action "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" adaptation, the Grinch is invited to become the Holiday Cheermeister for Whoville. However, it being on such short notice (a feature of synchronous time) would conflict with his sequential, planned activities.

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The Grinch Has quite the dilemma on his hands. Don't forget to like and Subscribe for more Content. Thanks!

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The idea of having a group of people in a line such that they can complete the task of transporting things, commonly water buckets for a fire brigade. These require outer strength because it relies on many people to work together to transport the thing they are transporting.

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100 Japanese Maids Making Pancake Breakfast

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100 Japanese Maids Making Pancake Breakfast

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In the movie "Limitless" our main character has an encounter with a drug that makes him very smart. With the help of this drug, he, finishes writing a book, cleans his apartment, and then makes lots of money on the stock market. The drug was the initial source of the main character's inner strength to do these things, but once off the drug, he continues to be successful and runs for Congress, so he managed to permanently incorporate some of the boost that the drug gave him into his own intelligence.

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In the beginning of this tale, the boy who cries wolf has great outer strength because he has an entire village to call on in order to protect his flock of sheep. However, as he keeps playing his little prank on the villagers, his outer strength wanes and he is left with just his own strength at the end, where the sheep are eaten and in some versions the boy himself.

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I think Maybelline's slogan "Maybe she's born with it, maybe it's Maybelline," plays well into the achievement/ascription dichotomy. The idea that a woman is born beautiful means that her beauty is ascribed by her genes, but on the other hand, her beauty may be due to their product and is an achieved property.

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The situation where a hero is stuck in a pinch, and all hope seems lost for them to succeed at defeating whatever antagonist they face, and are rendered helpless due to their antagonist or some sort of curse/disease. But through sheer determination or to protect those they care about, they manage to reverse or postpone their affliction and gain power to defeat their enemy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l_RU0BJBy4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGgpFkyrm7M

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"It's rare. It's something that doesn't happen within 100 years, but every once in a while, a Beta can become an Alpha without having to steal or take that power.
They call it a True Alpha. It's one who rises purely on the strength of the character,
by virtue, by sheer force of will."

The worst has happened; The Hero has not only been infected by the Big Bad with the soul eating virus, but their determined resistance looks like it's about to finally peter out. Just as his friends, family, and significant other look on in growing horror as he becomes a monster and turns to eat them... he doesn't. Even though The Virus has their body and maybe even their mind, it doesn't have their heart or soul. Through sheer grit, or to protect a loved one, they manage to not only resist the lure of The Dark Side, but use Evil Is Cool against itself. They may become far stronger than a typical Virus-afflicted, especially if young vampires/werewolves/monsters of that kind are weaker than old ones like the Big Bad and under their control.

The hero who manages to reverse the curse and uses their newfound powers to fight the Big Bad and their Dragon, and beat them at their own game as a Vampire Refugee. Usually, doing so manages to break whatever curse they're under thanks to No Ontological Inertia - except when it doesn't. If so, or if they choose to stay infected to fight other monsters (as borderline Zombie Infectees) they end up Cursed with Awesome or become a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire pursuing the path of the Ascended Demon.

The power up gained with Heroic Willpower sometimes manifests by becoming a One-Winged Angel or with a move up the Bishonen Line, visually distinguishing them from rank and file infected. Incidentally, despite the name, this isn't exclusive to heroes; the Determinator is a classic villain archetype, after all.

The internal struggle is often verbally indicated by the character gaining the Voice of the Legion, paired with physical and verbal tics like biting off each word in a loud (or even shouting) voice in a Punctuated! For! Emphasis! manner. When Played for Laughs the character will Lampshade this by saying something along the lines of "Must. Speak. Like. William Shatner!"

A Sub-Trope of Heroic Spirit.

Compare Heroic Resolve, Determinator (when the character is almost nothing but resolve and willpower), Hot-Blooded (when the character is nothing but resolve and willpower), Good Is Dumb, Deadly Upgrade, "I Know You Are in There Somewhere" Fight, and Intrinsic Vow.

Contrast with Fight Off the Kryptonite and Monsters Anonymous.

See also Sheep in Wolf's Clothing, Cursed with Awesome, The Dark Side, Evil Is Cool, No Ontological Inertia, The Virus, Viral Transformation, Doomed Protagonist.

Examples:

In Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race, Mega Man is able to resist Splash Woman's powers enough for her to become annoyed and give up on seducing him at the moment.

In , Rarity knows she isn't strong enough to hold off Enjin and save the civilians in harms way. So she knowingly releases Nightmare and lets her bond to her to recreate Nightmare Rarity, only to then mentally overpower Nightmare and take control of their body.

In and the The Lost Boys, the older brother, Mike, is given blood that's slowly making him a vampire. After a climactic battle where he, his brother and friends defend their home from the vampire gang that was turning him, he manages to beat the strongest vampire in the gang. When he doesn't turn human again real vampire lord show up, he beats him too and finally regains his humanity.

(the film) revolves around a chromosome which, when injected to people with an "evil" gene, turns them into murderous monsters. When Reaper is injected with it, he becomes superhuman, since he doesn't have the evil gene.
And also, one of the marines realizes that he is infected and brains himself to death before he can turn.

had our hero Ashley Williams corrupted and turned into a Deadite. He couldn't actually fight it off when it mattered, beating the hell out of the only other survivor and approaching her unconscious body to finish her off. Then he came across the bit of jewelry that he'd given his girlfriend earlier in the film, lets out a howl of pain, and successfully fights off possession.

: despite River Tam's brain is explicitly stated to be surgically altered to remove her ability to control her own behaviour, she nevertheless becomes less insane and more stable in the end of the film, with no explanation other than Heroic Willpower and the Power of Friendship.
Getting the secret of Miranda off her chest seems to have helped too.

: while everyone else who gets their brains put into alien bodies seems to lose all personality and will, the male lead uses his powerful new body to kick alien butt when they endanger his pregnant girlfriend.

: all of the good guys except the so-called "hero" manage at one point or another to resist the effects of the ancient mind control mask.

Into the Storm (2009) has this as Churchill's definiting characteristic. Quoth FDR:

Roosevelt: Maybe drunk, maybe a warmonger, but certainly a fighter.

In , Khadgar manages to resist The Corruption and exorcise it from Medivh, to boot with nothing more than a Survival Mantra and determination.

Inverted in Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, where Villainous Willpower determines which of the two possible Eldritch Abomination routes a follower of Chaos goes down - becoming a mindless Chaos Spawn or a Daemon Prince who retains sentience and control over his powers.

One example is Fulgrim at first his soul was trapped in a portrait by a demon of Slaanesh, but he was able to master demonic powers and regain control of his body. While trapping the demon in the portait he was imprisoned in.

But Heroic Willpower is usually an attribute which sets apart the BadAssNormals from the Refuge in Audacity named badass characters, and commonly just the elite forces from the less-so.

Blood Angels Chief Librarian Mephiston is the first Blood Angel to succumb to the Black Rage and come back from the frothing berserker state is usually induces, through sheer force of will. This has the side effect of giving him a near unprecedented control of his pyschic powers, earning him the title "the Lord of Death." A slightly lesser example, also from the Blood Angels, Chaplain Lemartes also fell to the black rage. But while Mephiston can actually control his rage, Lemartes is really only able to aim it. So while he's lucid, he's kept in stasis when not in battle for the safety of those around him.

Logan Grimnar, lord of the Space Wolves, wields the Axe of Morkai, which contains a demon of Chaos. The demon is unable to attack Grimnar's mind because of his iron will. That's right, Logan Grimnar got a demon of Chaos to bitch down!

The Illuminati, an Imperium-spanning secret society whose hidden objectives are allegedly in support of humanity and the Emperor, is composed of humans who have not only survived possession by a Warp entity, usually a daemon, but also managed to cast out the daemon from their own bodies through sheer force of will. This is in a setting where daemon possession ends in either mind shattering insanity or, in the case of a psyker, sometimes a really big explosion.

Way cooler than any of these is Settra the Imperishable from the fantasy Warhammer. In Warhammer: The End Times, the world is falling apart, Chaos is curbstomping the forces of Order all over the place, and at the height of their power all four Chaos Gods approach the greatest of the Tomb Kings and offer him absolutely everything: wealth, power, a new body of living gold, even minor godhood. What does Settra do? He gives them the finger, because Settra does not serve, Settra rules. Absolutely awesome.

In Dungeons & Dragons:

The Iron Will feat grants extra resistance to mind control, fear, and other mind-affecting magics.

Paladins' Divine Grace lets them apply their Charisma to their saving throws, resisting everything from dragons' fire to petrification with sheer force of personality.

3.5 Edition has the Iron Heart Surge combat maneuver, which, due to poor clarification, can end anything from raving insanity to being pregnant , but, because maneuvers require movement, can't break out of paralysis or Mind Control that Heroic Willpower typically ends.

This is represented in White Wolf's Storyteller/Storytelling systems by the appropriately-named Willpower score, which aids in throwing off mental influence and enhancing various dice rolls.

In Exalted, every character also has a handful of virtues. Compassion, Conviction, Temperance and Valor are ranked 1-5 based on how your character views them and acts on them. If you're trying to do something that fits a virtue, you can use Willpower to boost to your roll. So if you're some sod beating his wife or a kid, and a Compassion 5 Exalt sees you doing it odds are you're about ready to get the beatdown of a century. (The flip side to this is that characters with high virtues have bigger issues with Limit Breaks. No, not those Limit Breaks, but a mental breakdown where the character over-acts on the virtue. A valor-induced limit break may have the coward seek out the biggest and baddest monster to fight)

Hunters in Hunter: The Vigil are able to do all kinds of impressive things with Willpower points. It's not quite on par with its use in Exalted, but that's because Hunters are basically limited to Badass Normal with a few extra tricks.

Willpower functions in a similar way in the other World of Darkness gamelines. For example, not only is the difficulty of a Vampire's Dominate Discipline determined by the victim's Willpower (meaning that a character with maximum Willpower requires all but a perfect roll to control sucessfully), but certain merits, such as Code of Honor, or certain abilities, such as a Mage's Mind Sphere, can help increase the difficulty further. Willpower also determines whether or not a character falls victims to phobias.

The fuel behind superpowers in Wild Talents. Bottom out and your powers start to falter. Build it back up by conquering your foes, overcoming your inner demons, and being awesome.

by Henrik Ibsen runs on this trope, but Ibsen, of course, subverts it. Brand himself believes that the will counts, sets free or puts down. At a crucial point, another character points out that The Power of Love has to be taken into account as well.

In Yumi's Cells, when Yumi collapses and Woong has to Bridal Carry her several blocks to the hospital, his brain cells summon this.

NOW, RELEASE EVERY CARB IN HIS BODY!! WE'RE GOING INTO RUNNING MODE!!!

A Durkon gets turned into a vampire. Once freed from the possession of Malack, he seems to revert back to his normal self, albeit with new vampire powers and urges... until it's finally revealed that he was Subversion occurs in The Order of the Stick, when never in control at all - his soul is a hostage in his own body, which is controlled by an evil spirit.

In Journey of the Cartoon Man, Oswald Sherzikien uses the Glove of the Animator to control all of the cartoonified characters, but Roy has strong enough willpower to resist it.

The Ice King, of all people, from Adventure Time. It's shown that when someone else claims the Artifact of Doom that is his crown, that person tends to go insane in minutes, hours at the most. The Ice King held onto most of his sanity for at least 20 years, and although it was a losing battle, even during the time of the show centuries later he has many relatively lucid periods in which he's harmless and even friendly, compared to the rampaging lunatic Farmworld Finn became almost immediately.

Steven Universe:

Lapis Lazuli is practically the walking embodiment of this. When first introduced, her gem is so damaged that it's basically in three pieces. Despite this being a setting where her gem is her real body and its complete shattering would mean her death, and compared to Amethyst's cracked gem in 'An Indirect Kiss', which at worst stretched to barely a third of her gem, yet caused her to speak backwards while her body distorted itself uncontrollably, Lapis was indistinguishable from a whole gem. She held herself together despite the extensive damage, only losing some of her full strength and still retaining enough to take control of the entire planet's oceans.

She manages to up herself in "Jailbreak" when she that even the slightest disagreement between two Gems can force even a takes control of her and Jasper's fusion stable fusion to end, yet Lapis was able to force their unstable form together regardless of Jasper's struggles to end it.Malachite from Jasper and drag the two of them into the depths of the sea, managing to keep the fusion together despite Jasper actively trying to break it to escape. Keep in mind it was established earlier

Gravity Falls:

In the Grand Finale, Big Bad Bill Cipher, a Magnificent Bastard extraordinaire, seals protagonist Mabel in an enchanted bubble called "Mabelland." In Mabelland, people can have their deepest desires and wishes granted effortlessly; Bill, a Reality Warper extraordinaire, calls it his "best trap ever" and remarks that a "will of titanium" is needed to resist it. When Dipper, Wendy, and Soos enter the bubble to free Mabel, the latter two almost instantly give in to its powers, and Dipper is sorely tempted when Wendy (the older girl he's loved for the whole series) points out that in Mabelland, he could be aged up and they could be together. Dipper considers it...then turns it down, which in turn causes a massive Glamour Failure that helps him free Mabel from her world's influence. And he does this all at twelve years old.

A less grand, but no less awesome, example occurs with Pacifica Northwest, a Rich Bitch who gradually befriends Dipper and Mabel as the series progresses. Despite her newfound kindness, though, she still feels compelled to obey her father's orders; he's even trained her to do whatever he says when he rings a little bell. When an evil spirit who the Northwests wronged rises from the grave to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, Pacifica finds herself the only person able to break the ghost's curse by opening the family mansion's gates to the general public-but doing so would defy her father's wishes, and he refuses to let her do it, ringing his bell to force her to listen to him. Pacifica briefly calls him out on his stupidity, then pulls open the gates.

Mötley Crüe Guitarist Mick Mars has struggled with a condition called ankylosing spondylitis for most of his life. This disease is a form of arthritis that causes the ligaments in the lower spine to fuse with the bone. His condition got so bad that when the band split up, he reportedly gave up guitar playing. However, when the band reformed in December 2004 (coincidentally this was after he had hip replacement surgery) he decided to take up playing again, saying that "he'll be damned if it (the disease) was gonna have his soul too". He is still one of the greatest guitar players out there.

Ludwig van Beethoven suffered from his deafness after his earlier period of composing more Classical works. Initially, he had a hard time accepting this handicap (which would usually be an obvious death sentence for a music carreer), and even wrote the Heiligenstadt Testament which he mentioned losing the will to live. He got better, though, and went on to compose his later masterpieces including the 3rd (Eroica), 5th (Fate), 6th (Pastoral), and 9th (Ode to Joy) Symphonies, Moonlight Sonata, a Violin Concerto, and his only opera Fidelio, and he is now considered as the pioneer of Romantic Music.

Procrastination can be seen as a relatively-mundane version. It can be easy to just put stuff off, but it takes at least some willpower for most to get done what they actually need done.
Although those who procrastinate obsessively (to the point of receiving clinical diagnosis) often feel as if they need that level of willpower to do what they need to. Most people with obsessive disorders who manage to power through them are something of an example.

This Italian Brain surgeon was having bad chest pains in the midst of a surgery to remove a tumor from his patient, and feared it was a heart attack. He powered through it to finish the operation, solely because he knew that if he had stopped there, his patient would've likely never fully recovered.

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The worst has happened; The Hero has not only been infected by the Big Bad with the soul eating virus, but their determined resistance looks like it's about to finally peter out. Just as his friends, family, and significant other look on in ...

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Before computers were popular, they did not have user accounts; you could just turn one on and start using it. Trust was ascribed to whatever user was using it. Seeing as computers were machines worth thousands of dollars and mainly used for research and business purposes,  the computer just assumed whoever was using it was authorized to do so. These days, user accounts with passwords that force you to prove who you are makes you achieve that trust instead due to the rise of people who would do malicious things to our data and accounts

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This is very clearly ascription. Warren Buffett, the privileged man that he is, payed a 17.4% tax rate in 2011. This happens because of capital gains taxes being much lower for long-term investments, especially for the super-rich. He calls for congress to stop giving concessions to rich people, increasing the burden of taxes on the middle class and the working poor.

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Billionaire investor Warren Buffett wants to pay higher taxes.

In an op-ed in the New York Times, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway urged politicians in Washington to raise taxes on the "mega-rich" who have been "coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress."

Buffett, who has repeatedly argued for higher taxes on the rich, said the tax rate on his 2010 taxable income was about 17.4 percent, lower than any of the other people who work for him. Their rates ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent, he said.

The oracle of Omaha, as he is known, called on the newly-created "super committee" of 12 lawmakers tasked with improving the nation's fiscal health to immediately raise taxes on the richest 0.3 percent of Americans, though he declined to specify what he thinks the rate should be.

Buffett said the notion that capital gains tax rates should be lower than taxes on wages because it promotes investment is folly.

"People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off," Buffett wrote.

"I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone -- not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 -- shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain," he said.

Buffett said that the tax rates on his investment income were higher in the 1980s and 1990s than they are today and that has resulted in fewer jobs.

"I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what's happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation," he wrote.
CBS MoneyWatch Editor-at-Large Jill Schlesinger seeks to clarify how much money those higher rates could raise.

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Warren Buffett wants to pay higher taxes

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Billionaire investor Warren Buffett wants to pay higher taxes. In an op-ed in the New York Times, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway urged politicians in Washington to raise taxes on the "mega-rich" who have been "coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress."

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I think that this 13 year old girl who was disrespectful of her mother on Dr. Phil is a good representation of how the US is a more achievement-oriented society. She has gained the opportunities of great fame and fortune for being lucky enough to become a meme by being disrespectful toward her mother and apparently stealing cars. The way Americans refer to her is, I think, something similar to hero worship, and though she didn't really achieve anything of worth, she became extremely popular.

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The use of chatbots is not a new thing, when you think about websites like cleverbot or existor, however these two example were made to make general conversation, a fairly diffuse task. However, increasingly we see that different companies are now implementing their own chatbots so people can message the bot to order pizza or get an uber, a specific application. Chatbots have made it into people's homes as well, with bots like Cortana, Alexa, and Google Assistant.

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I think solving problems in a way which uses things in ways that they aren't normally used for is diffuse. Specifically, this wood burning thing would normally be used to stay warm while hanging out outside, and the copper pipe, while used to move water, is normally used for plumbing, not as a heat exchanger to heat up a pool.

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Donald Trump has said that certain news outlets are out to get him and that they have unfair coverage of his actions, going so far as to say that CNN is fake news and barring certain news outlets from asking questions or going to press conferences. This is specific minded because he is only going after new orgs that cover him in a negative light.

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When it comes to electronics, right to repair is simply that electronics manufacturers should sell repair parts to consumers and repair shops, and publicize diagnostic and service manuals, so that repair services are not monopolized by the companies that manufacture those electronics. This is a diffuse goal because it allows anyone to attempt to repair their device and potentially do it yourself or get it done somewhere else at a cheaper price.

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No Child Left Behind was a policy that made states have yearly standardized tests. One of the criticisms of this policy was that it caused teachers to "teach to the test" and ignore material that was not on the test. Students at an accelerated comprehension level would be taught with average and poorly performing students. This is an example of extreme communitarianism because those who could excel were not given the opportunity to do so.

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I believe that Elon Musk is a good example of individualism because of his business successes in electric & semi-autonomous cars, and recent ventures into solar power and power storage. Only recently are car manufacturers making cars that run on electricity, but Musk was the first to popularize it and make money off of it.

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School districts get their money from property taxes paid by those owning property in that district. While this policy is good for some districts, for other districts in less affluent neighborhoods it can leave schools underfunded and provide a lower quality education to students. When I was in Houston, I heard about a communitarian initiative where more affluent school districts would offset some of those property taxes to go to nearby poorer school districts to enhance their school programs.

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Let's begin with a choice.

Say there's a check in the mail. It's meant to help you run your household. You can use it to keep the lights on, the water running and food on the table. Would you rather that check be for $9,794 or $28,639?

It's not a trick question. It's the story of America's schools in two numbers.

That $9,794 is how much money the Chicago Ridge School District in Illinois spent per child in 2013 (the number has been adjusted by Education Week to account for regional cost differences). It's well below that year's national average of $11,841.

Ridge's two elementary campuses and one middle school sit along Chicago's southern edge. Roughly two-thirds of its students come from low-income families, and a third are learning English as a second language.

Here, one nurse commutes between three schools, and the two elementary schools share an art teacher and a music teacher. They spend the first half of the year at different schools, then, come January, box up their supplies and swap classrooms.

"We don't have a lot of the extra things that other districts may have, simply because we can't afford them," says Ridge Superintendent Kevin Russell.

One of those other districts sits less than an hour north, in Chicago's affluent suburbs, nestled into a warren of corporate offices: Rondout School, the only campus in Rondout District 72.

It has 22 teachers and 145 students, and spent $28,639 on each one of them.

What does that look like?

Class sizes in Rondout are small, and every student has an individualized learning plan. Nearly all teachers have a decade of experience and earn, on average, more than $90,000. Kids have at least one daily break for "mindful movement," and lunch is cooked on-site, including a daily vegetarian option.
The Simple Answer
Why does Rondout have so much and Ridge so little?

Over the past six months, NPR Ed and 20 of our member station partners set out to explore this basic question.

The simple answer is that many of Rondout's neighbors are successful businesses. They pay local taxes, and those taxes help pay for local schools. Ridge simply has less to work with - fewer businesses, lower property values.

More broadly: "You've got highly segregated rich and poor towns," says Bruce Baker of Rutgers University, who studies how states pay for their public schools. "[They] raise vastly different amounts of local revenue based on their local bases, and [Illinois] really doesn't put much effort into counterbalancing that."

To be fair, Illinois gives more money to Ridge than it does to Rondout. It's just not nearly enough to level the playing field.
For more on how Illinois pays for public schools, click here.
This tale of two schools isn't specific to Illinois. It plays out across the U.S., with kids the same age, in the same grade attending schools that try to educate them with wildly different resources. On average, New York, Alaska, and Wyoming each spent more than $17,000 per student in 2013, while California, Oklahoma and Nevada spent roughly half that.

Below, you can see that remarkable variation for yourself - and find out what schools are spending where you live. NPR teamed up with Education Week to build this map of per-student spending nationwide (adjusted for regional cost differences).

Over the next three weeks, the NPR Ed Team will unveil a vast collection of "School Money" stories told in collaboration with station reporters across the country. Our goal: To give voice to this school-funding imbalance and to explain what happens when many of America's poorest students also attend its poorest schools.

Here's one cause for alarm: The achievement gap between this nation's wealthiest and poorest students is growing dramatically, not shrinking.

We'll begin each week with a question to guide our coverage. For this, our first week:

"How do we pay for our schools?"

And the answer starts with Satan.

Yes, that Satan.

It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures ...
The Old Deluder
In 1647, Massachusetts Bay colonists were worried. New neighbors were arriving, and many could not read. Puritans considered literacy key to the survival of their faith: Teach every child to read so that every child can read the Bible.

And so the colony created a remarkable new law. It began, "It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures ... " and ended with a mandate: that towns of more than 50 families hire a teacher. The law also required that the teacher's wages be paid for "either by the parents or masters of such children, or by the inhabitants in general."

"This law reflected the idea that the local community was responsible for the well-being of all children, not just out of a sense of altruism but because the whole community depended on it," says Ben Justice, a professor of education history at Rutgers.

Fast forward 369 years, give or take a few months.

Today, our school funding system is infinitely more complex, but still based on that one, powerful idea - that education is a public good, and paying for it could be considered a public obligation.

In the U.S., school funding comes from a combination of three sources. The balance varies from state to state but, on average, looks like this: 45 percent local money, 45 percent from the state and 10 percent federal.

Which brings us back to where we began this story: Why is it that one Chicago-area district has $9,794 to spend on each of its students, while another, nearby district has three times that?

Two words: property tax.

These days, when we ask "the inhabitants in general" to help pay for their schools, we usually start with local property taxes. That's nothing new. The property tax is an old idea, older than America itself.

The problem with a school-funding system that relies so heavily on local property taxes is straightforward: Property values vary a lot from neighborhood to neighborhood, district to district. And with them, tax revenues.

To help poorer schools compensate for that local imbalance, some states have stepped in. In 2013, North Carolina provided two-thirds of its schools' funding.

"If we didn't have that, we'd be in pretty dire straits right now," says Rodney Shotwell, superintendent of Rockingham County Schools, a low-income, rural district along the state's northern border with Virginia.

This year, Rockingham got more than $5 million in extra state funding for its disadvantaged students. Shotwell says that money helped pay for teachers, instructional supplies, even custodians.
For more on North Carolina's school funding, click here.
But North Carolina is the exception, not the rule.

Most of the nation's superintendents and principals will tell you that whether they can afford a year-round art teacher or new textbooks depends at least in part on the property wealth around them. Just ask Tramene Maye.
Sumter County, Ala.
Maye is the principal of Livingston Junior High School in rural western Alabama. Most of his students come from low-income families. Sumter County is farm country, and what isn't farmland is timberland. In Alabama, both are lightly taxed. Maye gives us a guided tour of the results:

"In the girls restroom, they may have four or five stalls, but only one works," he says.

One room, no longer a classroom, leaks when it rains. Garbage cans catch some of the water, but the buckled floor and smell of mold suggest they miss plenty. Around the school, there are broken windows, peeling paint and cracked floors.

Again, some states send extra dollars to districts like Sumter that serve lots of low-income students, to help level the playing field, but Alabama isn't one of them.

Jewel Townsend is a star student at Sumter Central High, which is in better shape than the junior high. Still, she says it's hard when she travels and sees the buildings and sports facilities that other schools have.

"I see that Sumter County doesn't have that," Jewel says, her voice catching. "It's like, 'Wow, really? Why can't we have that?' "

In 2011, plaintiffs from Sumter tried to prove that the state's school funding system wasn't just unfair but was also racially discriminatory. In addition to being mainly low-income, all of Sumter's students are African-American.

I see that Sumter County doesn't have that, it's like, 'Wow, really? Why can't we have that?'

A federal judge excoriated Alabama's funding system in an 800-page opinion. Still, he found the plaintiffs were not entitled to relief from the court.
For more on Sumter County, click here.
And Sumter isn't the only school district to look for help from the courts.

Right now, 13 states are defending themselves in school-funding lawsuits: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Washington.
The Lawsuit Phenomenon
Since the early 1970s, nearly every state has seen at least one lawsuit over how it pays for schools and whether the result is fair or adequate.

Of the many funding lawsuits that have played out in the nation's courts, one stands out: San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez.

The suit, which made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, struck at the heart of the nation's school-funding system.

It was filed by Demetrio Rodriguez and other parents in Edgewood, a largely poor, Latino school district in San Antonio. Edgewood is across town from a largely white district that, back then, had some of the best-funded schools in Texas.

Rodriguez's sons attended an elementary school where the third floor had been condemned. It lacked books, and many teachers weren't certified.

The plaintiffs argued that any school-funding system that depends on local property tax revenue is fundamentally unfair to poorer districts.

Specifically, the suit claimed, the way we pay for our schools violates the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause, which says that no state shall "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

This was 1973, nearly 20 years after the Supreme Court used the equal protection clause to justify an end to racial segregation in America's schools.

In his decision in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote:

"It is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms."

The Rodriguez plaintiffs considered their lawsuit a natural extension of Brown: that disparities in school funding prevent America's students from getting that opportunity of an education on "equal terms."

The nation's schools had become more racially integrated, certainly, but were still profoundly segregated: Poor kids, black and white alike, found themselves clustered in largely poor schools.

In a split 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled against Rodriguez, saying there is no right to equal funding in education under the U.S. Constitution. Not that the system is fair or balanced - just that the federal government has no obligation to make it so.

In his forceful dissent, Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote, "I cannot accept such an emasculation of the Equal Protection Clause in the context of this case."

After a while you ask yourself, 'Is it ever really going to change?'

It was a turning point in the school funding debate.

"As a result of Rodriguez, the federal courts essentially washed their hands of the problem. And they turned it over to the states," says Michael Rebell, executive director of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University.

In the four decades since, dozens of lawsuits have been filed in state courts, arguing that their funding systems are either unfair, inadequate or both.

Instead of appealing to protections in the U.S. Constitution, plaintiffs have turned to state constitutions, most of which do include language that guarantees children the right to an education. (See what your state has to say here.)

In fact, a new case is now before the Texas Supreme Court, filed by 600 of the state's school districts. Their argument: More than 40 years after the Rodriguez ruling, the state's funding system is still out of balance.

Demetrio Rodriguez's daughter, Patty, was a toddler when her father's case was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. She's now a veteran teacher in Edgewood.

"It's nothing new," she says of this latest lawsuit. "After a while you ask yourself, 'Is it ever really going to change?' "
For more of Patty Rodriguez's story, click here. Desperate Measures
Across the country, schools in low-wealth districts face tough choices. Not only do they struggle to raise money locally, but many saw drastic cuts in state funding during and after the Great Recession.

According to this study from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, at least 31 states spent less money per student in 2014 than they did in 2008. During that time, the study found, local funding also dropped in 18 states.

To make ends meet, schools are cutting back everywhere they can. And some are hitting bone.

The rural Coolidge Unified School District, southeast of Phoenix, had already cut its arts and music classes as well as its librarians. But that wasn't enough. The district still struggled to attract and keep good teachers - because it couldn't pay them well.

So, Coolidge shaved a day off its school week. On Fridays, the district's teachers and students stay home. Because the schools are locked tight.

"To achieve savings," says Superintendent Charie Wallace, "we couldn't have people flipping on lights or turning on a computer."

The promise of a regular three-day weekend and a modest salary hike cut the district's teacher turnover rate in half this year.

"Anything I can do to pay teachers," Wallace says, "because they are the key to student achievement. They are the ones that deliver the goods."

That may explain why nearly 1 in 5 Arizona districts now uses the four-day school week.
For more on Arizona's four-day school week - and what it's meant for parents - click here. The Cost Of Poverty
And then there's Tiffany Anderson, the superintendent of Jennings School District just outside St. Louis, not far from Ferguson, Mo. She says many of her students come from poverty, and she's got to stretch the money she gets to help them.

"Every principal has to meet with me every month, and they have to justify how they spent every dollar," Anderson says.

She walks the walk, too. The crosswalk.

Every morning, she plays the role of crossing guard, walking kids across the street in front of one of the district's nine schools.

"The members of my staff, including myself, we have maybe 10 different roles that we juggle," Anderson says. "It's a way to really maximize that budget so we can divert dollars into the classroom."

Anderson isn't just about cutting costs, either; she's creative about finding new money. She put donated washers and dryers in some of her schools. Parents can use them in exchange for volunteering an hour in the classroom.

She has even forged some powerful outside partnerships to help pay for a district homeless shelter, health clinic and food pantry.

It's a double whammy for educators like Anderson who serve kids living in poverty: They often have less local money to work with but higher costs than other, more affluent districts. Kids can't check their poverty at the classroom door.
For more on Tiffany Anderson and school finance in Missouri, click here. The Math
We began with the question: "How do we pay for our schools?"

We've traveled now from that old deluder, Satan, to segregation. From a leaky ceiling in rural Alabama to a four-day school week in Arizona. From $9,794 to $28,639.

What does it all add up to?

To be sure, many parents who live in districts that can and do spend lavishly to educate their children argue that the system works just fine. And they're not wrong. It's working there. But it's not working everywhere.

Next week, we'll wade into the debate over the difference money can make in a classroom. And yes, it's a debate.

The Great Recession technically ended in June of 2009, but many of America's schools are still feeling the pinch.

A new study of state budget documents and Census Bureau data finds that the lion's share of spending on schools in at least 23 states will be lower this school year than it was when the recession began nearly a decade ago.

This analysis looked specifically at what's called general formula funding, which accounts for roughly 70 percent of the money states spend in their K-12 schools.

The report, from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, suggests that many of the nation's schools are being asked to educate a growing number of students without state lawmakers growing their budgets.

"Public investment in K-12 schools, which are crucial for communities to thrive and for the U.S. economy to offer broad opportunity, has declined dramatically in recent years," says Michael Leachman, director of state fiscal research at CBPP.

The report is a slurry of numbers, so the NPR Ed team pulled out a few of the most compelling figures.

As of 2014, the most recent year of available census data, 35 states were still spending less overall per student than they did in 2008. Why does that matter? Because state dollars, on average, account for nearly half of a school's revenues. The other major source of funding comes from local governments. That's our next headline ...

27 states saw their local funding drop from 2008 to 2014.

When you combine state and local dollars - which is most of the money schools survive on - overall funding dropped in 36 states.

That's right, 36 states were still living in 2008.

Arizona's schools saw the biggest percentage cut. From 2008 to 2014, per pupil spending by the state dropped nearly 37 percent. Which helps make sense of this story, reported for NPR's School Money project, about schools turning to a four-day week to save money. Voters did recently approve a funding increase, though it's not clear how big a difference that will make.

Some anomalous news (in case this story is bringing you down): Because of a natural resources windfall (oil!), North Dakota's school spending skyrocketed, up 94 percent from 2008 to 2014.

Five states - Kansas, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Arizona and Wisconsin - didn't just cut into their schools' general funding from 2008 to 2017; they also passed big tax cuts, making it even harder to raise school money. This is a big source of contention in the ongoing suit over funding in Kansas.

These cuts have also come in parallel with a rise in enrollment - up 1.1 million students from 2008 to 2016 ...

And a loss of some 220,000 education jobs.

In short, schools are simply being asked to do more with less. Although, of course, there's nothing simple about it.

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Week 1: Why America's Schools Have A Money Problem

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Let's begin with a choice. Say there's a check in the mail. It's meant to help you run your household. You can use it to keep the lights on, the water running and food on the table. Would you rather that check be for $9,794 or $28,639? It's not a trick question.

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In Lois Lowry's "The Giver", people grow up in a utopian society, where in school, to teach interdependence to children under a certain age, their jackets are open at the back and need to be buttoned up by a peer.

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In the situation regarding the cook at a Burger King in Vancouver, the cook had asked the manager to have a "fish" (sandwich) because she had left her wallet at home. The manager agreed to it, but the cook took an entire meal, not just a sandwich. The owner considered this stealing and fired her, a very universalist option for a "theft" of only 50 cents (that she offered to pay back), which was reflected by the court's particularist solution to award her damages because it wasn't a very large offense and she lost her job.

The U.S. Congress repealing a law that put mentally ill people who received social security benefits on a background check system also comes from a universalist idea that all Americans have the right to own and bear arms, in opposition to the particularist idea that mentally ill people should not have access to guns because they could be dangerous to themselves and those around them.

The White House plan for foreign nationals from the countries that had been banned from immigration to give up the passwords to their social media accounts and cell phone data before coming into the country is a particularist solution, akin to how the 7 country ban was. A universalist would probably ask that all immigrants entering the country would have to give these up as well (in a very Orwellian 1984 "big brother" state kind of way, but at that point, who's to stop the government for doing it to citizens as well, like the NSA's whole phone call metadata scandal.

The Washington Supreme Court ruling against a florist who denied service to a wedding between gay people was a universalist ruling; that businesses should not be able to deny customers equal accommodations because of who they are. The florist was particularist in denying those gay people service because she thought that because they were gay, she could refuse them service, and in doing so express her Christian disapproval for their gay wedding.

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Privacy advocates voiced indignation Thursday at a White House plan to demand that some visa-bearing foreign travelers to the United States provide officials the passwords to their social media accounts and turn over their cellphones to be searched.

The advocates said the plan was unlikely to deter terrorists and might be turned on Americans traveling abroad.

"If we adopt it, other countries are going to adopt it," said David Kaye, a law professor at the University of California at Irvine. "Americans who travel better be prepared to provide this to other governments."

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly laid out the proposal this week on Capitol Hill and again in an interview with National Public Radio that aired on Thursday.

Under the plan, Kelly said, border agents would ask visitors "to give us a list of websites that they visit and the passwords to get on those websites to see what they're looking at." Agents would also examine "what they tweet, cellphones, cellphone conversations or cellphone contact books to where we can run them against databases: telephone numbers, people, names."

To start with, Kelly said, the proposal would be aimed at visitors from the seven nations named in a 90-day travel ban that President Donald Trump set in a Jan. 27 executive order. Those majority-Muslim countries are Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. He added that the program "could be" expanded.

This is security theater. This isn't actually going to help.

Nuala O'Connor, head of the Center for Democracy & Technology

"This is security theater. This isn't actually going to help," said Nuala O'Connor, a former Department of Homeland Security official who now heads the Center for Democracy & Technology, a civil liberties and privacy group headquartered in Washington.

O'Connor called the proposal "outrageous" and said it was a "sledgehammer response to the San Bernardino terrorist attack" in late 2015 in which 14 people were slain at a holiday party in that Southern California city.

"The theory of the case is, if we could see everybody's Facebook profiles and LinkedIn profiles and Twitter accounts - both public and private postings - in theory the country could have prevented San Bernardino," O'Connor said, noting that one of the two assailants, Pakistani-born Tashfeen Malik, is believed to have posted jihadist rants on Facebook before taking part in the terrorist shooting.

"That is totally flawed," said O'Connor, who served as the chief privacy officer at DHS from 2003 until 2005 under President George W. Bush. "First off, we don't have enough translators to read all that stuff."

It's kind of the equivalent of asking everyone to take off our shoes at the airport because of the shoe bomber.

Nuala O'Connor, former Homeland Security official

"It's kind of the equivalent of asking everyone to take off our shoes at the airport because of the shoe bomber," O'Connor said, referring to the 2001 case of Richard Reid, a British Muslim who tried but failed to set off a bomb in his shoes on a flight from Paris to Miami.

Questions about the social media activity of foreign travelers began under the Obama administration. Since December, DHS has asked visitors from 38 countries - including European Union nations - that usually travel visa-free to the United States to fill out an online form that has an optional listing of social media used by the traveler.

In a drop-down menu, the form lists 13 social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and LinkedIn but also Vkontakte - used primarily by Russian speakers - and GitHub, popular among programmers. Travelers are asked to provide their user names.

The Trump administration has not outlined how it would store or analyze the information it would collect under the broader policy,

The proposal lit up social media around the world, and one activist said he feared that the information repository of traveler data could become vulnerable.

Where does that content go to? Where is it kept? How safe? Is it encrypted?

Jamal Dajani, founder of Arab Talk Radio

"From what I heard, when you give up your phone to Homeland Security, they download the contents," said Jamal Dajani, a journalist, Middle East analyst and founder of Arab Talk Radio, a program based in San Francisco. "Where does that content go to? Where is it kept? How safe? Is it encrypted?"

He noted that U.S. government entities have been hacked by Russia, China and other nations, and that information in the hands of the government is not necessarily safe.

Kaye, who also is serving a three-year term as the United Nations global special rapporteur for freedom of expression, called the plan to search the cellphones of visitors a "disproportionate intrusion into privacy."

"Everything we do, everything we are, everybody we know, is on our phone. And so if we're demanding that people provide that to government, we're opening ourselves up to all kinds of intrusion," Kaye said.

EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE

Travelers from countries in disfavor are likely to respond in a certain way, Kaye said.

"They may not bring their devices, and they could certainly say they are not on social media," Kaye said. If other governments began demanding the same of Americans, he added, travelers may respond as they do when traveling to China, which already practices deep control of people's digital lives, foreigners and Chinese alike.

"If you're going to China, and you are really concerned about maintaining your privacy and your contacts, you leave your phone, your tablet, your computer at home," Kaye said.

Kaye said he was not given to "slippery slope" arguments but found it difficult not to make one with the latest proposal.

"If we're doing this at the border, what's the argument for stopping there? Why not continue on with domestic travel?" Kaye asked.

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If U.S. asks foreigners for their passwords, American travelers may face the same

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Privacy advocates voiced indignation Thursday at a White House plan to demand that some visa-bearing foreign travelers to the United States provide officials the passwords to their social media accounts and turn over their cellphones to be searched. The advocates said the plan was unlikely to deter terrorists and might be turned on Americans traveling abroad.

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-On Wednesday, the Republican-led Senate voted to repeal a regulation that would have prevented an estimated 75,000 people diagnosed with mental disorders from purchasing a firearm.

The rule, created in the wake of the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school by a man diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder, was part of a package of regulations aimed at preventing mentally ill people who receive Social Security disability benefits from being able to buy a gun. Senators voted 57-43 to strike down a key part of the regulation that required the Social Security Administration to report anyone who received disability benefits and had mental health conditions to an FBI background check system.

The resolution of disapproval in the Obama-era measure passed both the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and Senate and is expected to be signed into law by President Trump.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R) of Iowa, who spearheaded the repeal effort, said that the regulation had been filled with "vague characteristics that do not fit into the federal mentally defective standard," citing sleeping and eating disorders as examples of mental disorders that could lead to an unjust reporting of Social Security disability to the FBI, if they also had a third party to manage the benefits.

"If a specific individual is likely to be violent due to the nature of their mental illness, then the government should have to prove it," said Senator Grassley.

Many Democrats disagreed, however, including Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, who represents Newtown, Conn.

"The [Congressional Review Act] we have before us today will make it harder for the federal government to do what we have told them to do for decades, which is to put dangerous people and people who are seriously mentally ill on the list of people who are prohibited from buying a gun," he said from the Senate floor, prior to the vote.

But while opposition and support for the repeal fell mostly along party lines among legislators, many nonpartisan advocacy groups also supported the repeal of the regulation, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which claimed the original rule supported the harmful and false stereotype that "a vast and diverse group of [mentally ill] citizens, are violent."

"The gun restriction rule is a well-meaning policy that gets some things right, notably its support of federal efforts to improve detection of risky people who should not have legal access to guns," wrote Jeffrey Swanson, a professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University School of Medicine, in an editorial for The Washington Post. "But despite its good intentions, what the policy actually does is take away the gun rights of a large category of individuals without any evidence that they pose a risk of harm to self or others, and without legal due process protections commensurate with abridging a constitutional right."

While the rule would have allowed people to appeal if they felt they were inappropriately flagged, Dr. Swanson said that he supports the repeal of the "bad regulation." He added, however, that he would have preferred lawmakers to modify the law in keeping with evidence-based knowledge of the complex issue.

"As a researcher on firearms policy and mental health, I opposed the rule when it was first established. It wasn't supported by evidence, and it was far too broad," he writes. "Now, Republicans are unlikely to revisit evidence-based gun control policyanytime soon."

But other organizations took issue with what they see as a politically-motivated and uncritical repeal of an Obama-era regulation.

"This heartless resolution puts the most vulnerable Americans at risk," said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "Make no mistake, this vote was really about deepening the gun industry's customer pool, at the expense of those in danger of hurting themselves or others."
This article contains material from the Associated Press.

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Congress nixes regulation that would block gun sales to mentally ill

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On Wednesday, the Republican-led Senate voted to repeal a regulation that would have prevented an estimated 75,000 people diagnosed with mental disorders from purchasing a firearm.

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OLYMPIA, Wash. -- The Washington Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that a florist who refused to provide services for a same-sex wedding broke the state's anti-discrimination law, even though she claimed doing so would violate her religious beliefs.

Barronelle Stutzman, a florist in Richland, Washington, had been fined by a lower court for denying service to a gay couple in 2013. Stutzman said she was exercising her First Amendment rights.

But the court held that her floral arrangements do not constitute protected free speech, and that providing flowers to a same-sex wedding would not serve as an endorsement of same-sex marriage.

"As Stutzman acknowledged at deposition, providing flowers for a wedding between Muslims would not necessarily constitute an endorsement of Islam, nor would providing flowers for an atheist couple endorse atheism," the opinion said.

Stutzman's lawyers immediately said they would ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the decision.

"It's wrong for the state to force any citizen to support a particular view about marriage or anything else against their will," Stutzman's attorney, Kristen Waggoner, wrote in a statement issued after the ruling. "Freedom of speech and religion aren't subject to the whim of a majority; they are constitutional guarantees."

It's one of several lawsuits around the country - including some involving bakers - about whether businesses can refuse to provide services over causes they disagree with, or whether they must serve everyone equally.

A Colorado case involving a baker who would not make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, according to Lambda Legal. In 2014, the court declined to hear an appeal of a case out of New Mexico that went against a photographer who denied a same-sex couple service.

Gov. Jay Inslee lauded Thursday's ruling, saying it was "in favor of equality for all Washingtonians."

"By ruling that intolerance based on sexual orientation is unlawful, the Court affirmed that Washington state will remain a place where no one can be discriminated against because of who they love," Inslee said in a written statement.

Stutzman had previously sold the couple flowers and knew they were gay. However, Stutzman told them that she couldn't provide flowers for their wedding because same-sex marriage was incompatible with her Christian beliefs.

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson and the couple sued her, saying she broke state anti-discrimination and consumer protection laws, and the lower court agreed. The state's nine high court justices upheld that verdict.

The court rejected several arguments put forth by Stutzman, including the assertion that since other florists were willing to serve the couple, no harm occurred.

"As every other court to address the question has concluded, public accommodations laws do not simply guarantee access to goods or services. Instead, they serve a broader societal purpose: eradicating barriers to the equal treatment of all citizens in the commercial marketplace," the court wrote. "Were we to carve out a patchwork of exceptions for ostensibly justified discrimination, that purpose would be fatally undermined."

The case thrust the great-grandmother into the national spotlight and she testified before state lawmakers in Indiana and Kansas.

Michael Scott, a Seattle attorney who worked with the American Civil Liberties Union to represent Robert Ingersoll and Curt Freed - the couple denied the flowers - had previously told justices he didn't believe Stutzman's floral creations constituted speech. By providing flowers for a same-sex marriage, he argued, "she's not endorsing same-sex marriage. She's selling what she sells."

Ferguson had said the state's argument rested on longstanding principle, and uprooting it would weaken anti-discrimination law.

After the arguments in the Supreme Court case last November, at a packed theater at Bellevue College, a large crowd of Stutzman's supporters greeted her outside, chanting her name and waving signs with pictures of roses that said "Justice For Barronelle."

In a February 2015 ruling, Benton County Superior Court Judge Alexander Ekstrom found that Stutzman's refusal to provide flowers because of sexual orientation violated Washington's anti-discrimination and consumer protection laws. She has been fined $1,000, plus $1 in court costs and fees.

Stutzman entered the florist business 30 years ago, when her mother bought a flower shop and she started as a delivery person.

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Washington Supreme Court rules against florist in same-sex wedding case

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OLYMPIA, Wash. -- The Washington Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that a florist who refused to provide services for a same-sex wedding broke the state's anti-discrimination law, even though she claimed doing so would violate her religious beliefs. Barronelle Stutzman, a florist in Richland, Washington, had been fined by a lower court for denying service to a gay couple in 2013.

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A Canadian court has awarded a former Burger King cook $46,000 ($35,000 USD, £28,000) in damages after she was fired for taking home a fish sandwich, fries and beverage.

Usha Ram says her manager gave her permission to take home the food.

The 55-year-old immigrant from Fiji had worked at various Burger King locations around Vancouver for 24 years.

Her boss, Janif Mohammed, fired her to warn other staff against theft.

In her ruling, Justice Lisa Warren found that the employers acted in an "unreasonable, unfair and unduly insensitive manner" and should have considered that Ms Ram would have difficulty finding other employment because of her age, limited education and English skills.

Mr Mohammed, who defended himself, says Ms Ram was an exemplary employee, a "wonderful lady" and a "good worker". The two had worked together since 1989.

At the time of her dismissal, in January 2014, she was earning $21,000 a year and working full-time. Her husband is physically disabled and she also supports an adult daughter with a mental disability. She is the sole earner in her household.

The judge ordered the franchise co-owners, Mr Mohammed and Michael Lacombe, to pay her $21,000 in general damages, or the equivalent of one-year severance. The judge also awarded her $25,000 in aggravated damages for emotional distress.

The incident occurred on Boxing Day in 2013, when Ms Ram asked the store's manager Tayyaba Salman if she could take home some food at the end of her shift because she had forgotten her wallet.

"Can I have a fish?" she asked in Hindi, her native language.

According to court documents, store policy permits employees to have free beverages during their shift, and a 50% discount on food, but managers were allowed to make exceptions.

In the end, the judge ruled, the dispute boils down to a misunderstanding over what Ms Ram meant when she asked for "a fish". Ms Ram testified she meant a combo meal, Ms Salman interpreted it to mean a sandwich. There is no word for "sandwich" in Hindi, Ms Salman told the court.

When Ms Ram walked out with a fish sandwich, medium fries and orange soda without paying, Ms Salman reported her to Mr Mohammed. After applying the employee discount, the value of the fries and drink taken by Ms Ram was about 50¢.

On 30 December, Ms Ram was called into the office with Ms Salman and Mr Mohammed, who accused her of stealing. Ms Ram began to cry, and offered to pay him for the food she took, but Mr Mohammed told her to go home. Later, he told the judge her offer to pay was an admission of theft.

She was fired shortly after, without severance.

"Had he simply turned his mind to the specific words that Ms Salman said Ms Ram used when she asked to take the food, or the fact that Ms Ram made no attempt to conceal what she was doing, he would likely have appreciated the significant possibility of a misunderstanding between Ms Ram and Ms Salman," Justice Warren ruled.

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A Canadian court has awarded a former Burger King cook $46,000 ($35,000 USD, £28,000) in damages after she was fired for taking home a fish sandwich, fries and beverage. Usha Ram says her manager gave her permission to take home the food.

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My name is Humza Tariq, and I was born and raised in Houston. I transferred to UT Austin after I spent my freshman year at UT Arlington through the CAP program. My major is in Electrical Engineering, but I have interest in computer security as well. Back in high school, I enjoyed playing tennis and Ultimate Frisbee. I also like to play video games & board games, and watch anime. I have a brother in his senior year at University of Houston, who is doing pre-med.

My parents and extended family are from and live in Pakistan, though some live in Canada as well. I don't speak Urdu very well, but my family members speak English so it's fine, I guess. The last time I went to Pakistan was 2 years ago when my cousin got married. I took Spanish for 5 years from middle school to high school and got B's every year, so I switched to German in my senior year and got my first A in a language.