Chinese official booted after account of lurid affair emerges

By Ed Flanagan, Producer, NBC News

BEIJING ? The rise of new Chinese leader Xi Jinping last November has not been good for mainland officials caught with their pants down.

In recent months, a slew of low-level Communist officials as well as a few high ranking ones ?most notably the vice party chief of the southwestern province of Sichuan, Li Chuncheng ? have been exposed by local media and dismissed from their positions after their sexual peccadilloes came to light.

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The latest senior official to be toppled due to a sex scandal, Yi Junqing, was a vice minister in charge of China Central Committee?s Central Compilation and Translation Bureau.

His dismissal was announced Thursday in a one-sentence statement by Chinese state media, which simply noted he had been "removed from post for 'improper lifestyle.'"?

The terse release by the state-run Xinhua news service belied the expansive and often lurid claims that have flooded the Web about Yi?s sexual trysts. Yi was seemingly exposed by his alleged mistress, Chang Yan, who posted a 120,000 Chinese character essay online detailing the sex, money and gifts exchanged over many months.

Though many of the affair?s particulars read like the clich?-ridden narratives familiar to many Chinese who have followed the adventures of officials over the years, this case is unique in that it shows the lengths to which many in China go to secure coveted ministry jobs, and the economic and social security that comes with those jobs.

Chang, 35, a married native of China?s Shanxi province, was a visiting post-doctorate student at the Translation Bureau and had aspirations of landing a job there once her studies were completed.

Earning employment at the bureau?s Beijing office ? and thus the proper permits needed to bring her husband from Shanxi to live and work in Beijing ?would require the authorization of Yi, who ran the bureau.

According to Chang?s account, the price for that approval turned out to be steep, both morally and financially.

"I was trying to figure out what he wants, money or me," Chang wrote in one excerpt translated by the U.K.?s Telegraph newspaper. "There is no free lunch if I wanted to work for the bureau. I knew there was a price to pay to work for the bureau. I had already paid 10,000 yuan [USD$1,600]. He said he would take two months to get me the job and then he would invite me."

Besides giving in and becoming Yi?s mistress, Chang writes that she paid $10,000 in total to Yi to secure this government position. Yi?s failure to deliver on that job led Chang to post details of the sordid affair on her private blog, she said.

That someone would sleep with a potential boss or even pay for a position is of no surprise in China, but to have it written about so openly sparked an uproar online.

Despite censors erasing the story on Chinese websites, news of the essay soon spread on the Web.

On China?s Twitter-like service, Weibo, the affair became a hot topic Friday.

A post by Chang on her blog ? where the original entry was quickly erased ? seemed to suggest that the story had been written as a piece of fiction.

"In my spare time I put together a work of fiction," Chang wrote on her blog entry. "I suffered serious depression... and regularly sank into a state of delusion and even fantasy."

Weibo users overwhelmingly dismissed the confession as forced and condemned Yi for his corruption.

"Rumor has again proven to be truth," wrote one user.

"If we got rid of officials like Yi who had these types of affairs, we?d have to eliminate 99.9 percent of them!" declared another.

Regardless of whether her story is true or not, Yi?s dismissal Thursday shows the lengths to which China?s ruling Communist Party appears willing to go in order to maintain its legitimacy and supremacy.

More news from China from NBC News' Behind the Wall

NBC News' Le Li contributed to this report.

Source: http://behindthewall.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/18/16584237-chinese-official-booted-after-account-of-lurid-affair-emerges?lite

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Freelance Writing Jobs for January 18, 2013

Join thousands of writers who visit Freelance Writing Jobs every day for Job?Leads, Writing?Tips, Business?Help, and more.

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Haptic Steering Wheels Could Save You From the Blinding Sun

Let's say you're flying down the road at inadvisably high speeds, listing to some tunes, and having a grand old time. And then, Mr. Sun just happens to peek out from behind a distant building/mountain/hill and punches you straight in the gat-dang eyes. You're blinded by the light. Whatchu gonna do? More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/GzmsGgiAb28/haptic-steering-wheels-could-save-you-from-the-blinding-sun

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Education: What Lurks Below The Surface? | Education News

Progressive John Dewey?s and his followers plan to ?transform America? marks the decline of American education and all that it wrong with it. Bruce Price gives us some practical recommendations on how to provide a superior education for our children that requires parental vigilance and engagement to point our schools and our children in a better direction

BY BRUCE DEITRICK PRICE -

Education is a mystifying field. You can study it for years but remain forever on the surface.

The media, for example, endlessly discuss every aspect of public education. But nothing improves; and nobody explains why we spend so much money but get mediocre results. (Note: many pundits believe the public schools are now so bad they are a threat to this country?s survival.)

Here?s my main theme these days. We must look deeper. Until we grapple with the underlying causes, nothing will improve. We have to move inside the machine and figure out how it works.

One thing we know for certain is that our education stats are dismal. So let?s stay focused on international tests, statistics, SAT scores, and everything else that quantifies our malaise. These unpleasant facts should be our main reference point.

The second thing we know is that a LOT of activity is taking place. Tens of millions of children, tens of thousands of classrooms, billions of books, more than a million teachers. Everything is busy-busy-busy. But then we come back to the central fact: somebody neglected to make all this activity smart and productive.

Instead, we have too much activity that is like a mime pulling a rope. The rope is imaginary; the mime is not actually ?pulling.? In a similar way, a lot of the education in our public schools is theatre; it?s mime. Nobody is being educated. The stats prove that.

Now, let?s zoom in on the essential components of this activity, these being what professors of education call ?theories and methods.? Typically, somebody has a flashy theory that children should be taught a subject a certain way; other professors devise methods incorporating the theory. Theory A leads to Method B which is the basis of Textbook C. Obviously, dumb theories will spawn dumb curricula.

My conclusion, after years of wrestling with the most popular theories and methods found in the public schools, is that most of them are flawed. In fact, they are shockingly second-rate. It?s as though you hired a tone deaf person to compose your corporate song. How did we got into this bind?

John Dewey (d. 1952) and his followers were Progressives who wanted to fundamentally transform the United States. Dewey and friends were also professors of education; naturally they thought of using the schools to achieve their ideological goals. The plan was simple: first indoctrinate teachers; have the teachers indoctrinate the kids.

When Dewey?s educators selected classroom methods, the primary concern was social engineering, not traditional education. That?s the crucial shift. We?re still living with the aftershocks. Simply put, Dewey cared more about children playing harmoniously together than he did about what each one learned.

Meanwhile, parents usually demanded more traditional education, not less. They wanted as much learning as their kids could absorb. Thus, the sides were drawn. For 75 years, we have had Education Wars.

How do we escape from this wasteful and paralyzing conflict? In an ideal world, the social engineers give up their UNAUTHORIZED experiments and get back to teaching kids the skills and knowledge that everyone needs.

Unfortunately, that may not be happening any time soon. Common Core Curriculum seems to be another wave of the same old indoctrination. However, there is still much we can do. Americans can be better educated about education. Don?t expect the Education Establishment to reveal their dark secrets. Parents need to do a little homework, that?s all.

Parents can learn to recognize the names of the flawed methods used in our schools, and then fight to eliminate them.

Whole Word (a/k/a sight-words) is the worst way to learn to read. Insist on systematic phonics.

Reform Math (which has 12 separate curricula including Everyday Math) is the worst way to learn math; try instead Singapore Math, Saxon Math, or similar.

Constructivism is a fancy word for preventing teachers from teaching, so that students are forced to discover facts for themselves. It might work sometimes. Usually, the result is that kids know less foundational knowledge.

There are many suspect methods: Project-Based Learning; Prior Knowledge; Learning Styles; Cooperative Learning; Multiculturalism; Self-esteem, for starters. Despite clever names and glorious claims, these things tend to retard education. The stats prove that.

The Education Establishment is clever at keeping us distracted and confused. We end up staring at the surface they want us to see. No more. Let?s look at the warped gears inside the machine, and replace them.

via Education: What Lurks Below The Surface? | The Moral Liberal.

About or from a variety of publications on EducationViews.org

?The quality and variety of the selections you will find on EducationViews.org is second-to-none on the internet today. Since 1997 we have been providing this service at no cost to education professionals, the public in general and policy makers. Hope you enjoy the articles and commentary. Please forward us to your friends and associates. EducationViews.org is maybe the most effective way to transforming educators. The daily email offers a direct and easy way for busy teachers to grow philosophically. I was skeptical, but once you open the email and decide to read a story, you are hooked and it becomes a daily ritual to check out what?s happening. Educating teachers as to what is really going on in the schools opens up a new worldview and vision of thinking most have not been exposed to. The end result, better informed teachers who have a more effective understanding of the principles that make academic achievement a reality. Great job. The more email addresses of educators you get on your list, the bigger the impact and the more kids you will positively influence.

Source: http://educationviews.org/education-what-lurks-below-the-surface/

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War crime suspects nabbed: Voice of Russia

The detained are charged with the September 1992 murder of seven Bosnian Serbs taken prisoner by Muslims.

In 1992 Bosnia-Herzegovina declared its independence from Federal Yugoslavia, sparking a bloody conflict, involving local Muslims, Serbs and Croatians, which ran until 1995.

Voice of Russia, RIA

Source: http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_01_18/War-crime-suspects-nabbed/

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Your Sports Now: The State of UT Football

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This week the YNN sports team hosts a round table discussion on the state of the UT football team. Chip Brown of Orangebloods.com, Kirk Bohls of the Austin American-Statesman and Mike Finger of the San Antonio Express-News sit down with YNN Sports Director Ricky Doyle to break down Mack Brown's program.

Source: http://austin.ynn.com/content/top_stories/290061/your-sports-now--the-state-of-ut-football

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Light from darkness: Brilliant stars emerging from dusty stellar nursery

Jan. 16, 2013 ? An evocative new image from the European Southern Observatory shows a dark cloud where new stars are forming, along with a cluster of brilliant stars that have already emerged from their dusty stellar nursery. The new picture was taken with the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile and is the best image ever taken in visible light of this little-known object.

On the left of this new image there is a dark column resembling a cloud of smoke. To the right shines a small group of brilliant stars. At first glance these two features could not be more different, but they are in fact closely linked. The cloud contains huge amounts of cool cosmic dust and is a nursery where new stars are being born. It is likely that the Sun formed in a similar star formation region more than four billion years ago.

This cloud is known as Lupus 3 and it lies about 600 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion). The section shown here is about five light-years across.

As the denser parts of such clouds contract under the effects of gravity they heat up and start to shine. At first this radiation is blocked by the dusty clouds and can only be seen by telescopes observing at longer wavelengths than visible light, such as the infrared. But as the stars get hotter and brighter their intense radiation and stellar winds gradually clear the clouds around them until they emerge in all their glory.

The bright stars right of the centre of this new picture form a perfect example of a small group of such hot young stars. Some of their brilliant blue light is being scattered off the remaining dust around them. The two brightest stars are bright enough to be seen easily with a small telescope or binoculars. They are young stars that have not yet started to shine by nuclear fusion in their cores and are still surrounded by glowing gas [1]. They are probably less than one million years old.

Although they are less obvious at first glance than the bright blue stars, surveys have found many other very young stellar objects in this region, which is one of the closest such stellar nurseries to the Sun.

Star formation regions can be huge, such as the Tarantula Nebula where hundreds of massive stars are being formed. However, most of the stars in our and other galaxies are thought to have formed in much more modest regions like the one shown here, where only two bright stars are visible and no very heavy stars are formed. For this reason, the Lupus 3 region is both fascinating for astronomers and a beautiful illustration of the early stages of the life of stars.

Note

[1] These are known as Herbig Ae/Be stars after the astronomer who first identified them. The A and B refer to the spectral types of the stars, somewhat hotter than the Sun, and the "e" indicates that emission lines are present in their spectra, due to the glow from the gas around them. They shine by converting gravitational potential energy into heat as they contract.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by European Southern Observatory (ESO).

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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/fyrKUwDvzGE/130116091451.htm

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