Professor Says Textbooks Are Too Expensive, Quits Using Them

Ron Hammond, Phd, professor at Utah Valley State College, has quit using

“I think it’s immoral because of the cost of it,” Hammond told the Central Utah Daily Herald.

Instead of textbooks, Hammond has been assigning journal articles and other reading materials that his students can check out from the library or download from the internet, a practice which, if every one of their professors did it, would save students (on average) $900 a year.

It took Hammond a year to rewrite his own curriculum, after throwing out all his old textbooks. “It was worth it in the long run,” Hammond said.

We always appreciated professors who did this when we were in college. At least at our college, providing xeroxed readings from various sources via downloadable PDFs instead of multiple textbooks was common. Often we could get away with sharing the textbook with a friend or using the copy on reserve at the library.

Hooray for professors who understand that college is expensive!

Getting ready to pay for books myself, this is a good trend to see.

Source: The Consumerist

A word from Ron Paul

On the Federal Reserve:

On Iraq:

District To Pay $100 For Good Performances On Standardized tests

An eastern Ohio school district is experimenting with an incentive usually deployed by parents to coax good grades out of students — paying them up to $100 for good performances on state achievement exams.

Coshocton City Schools is in the last year of a three-year experiment run by an economics professor at Case Western Reserve University. Officials of the 2,000-student district will decide after getting Eric Bettinger’s final data this summer whether to continue it.

The third- through sixth-graders in the study receive $15 for every score of “proficient” on a state exam and $20 for better results — so they can collect $100 if they have high scores in all five subjects. The money comes as gift certificates redeemable at a local pizza parlor and Wal-Mart.

Coshocton manufacturer Robert Simpson paid for the project with a $100,000 grant from his family foundation, and says the foundation is ready to take the rewards districtwide if the data and the community support it.

“We are confident the incentives work, and our foundation is very pleased with the program so far,” Simpson said.For the experiment, entire grades from the city’s four elementary schools were randomly chosen to either receive the rewards or not.

Although Bettinger is not releasing his study results early, the district has climbed out of the state’s “academic emergency” ranking since the rewards began. It is now two notches higher, at “effective” status.

I guess if you think of it as a tax refund…. it doesn’t seem so completely insane.

Source: News net 5 

Best Buy Calls 911 On Customer Asking For Refund B…

Best Buy calls 911 after Consumerist reader RJH asks for a refund on a nonworking Tony Bennet CD.

Sooooo RJH buys the CD and goes to his car to play it. He gets “Disk read error” three times. RJH walks back in with his three minute old album and receipt and asks for a refund.

The clerk tells him there’s state and federal laws against refunding money. Our guy calls him a fool.

Manager comes and says the guy can have a substitute disk or leave, or else the manager will have him arrested for trespassing.

Guy laughs.

Manager calls 911…

Click the link for the personal story of the person involved.

Why would they even bother with refusing? It’s not like they’d lose anything.

They were lazy people who created more problems for themselves for no reason. Where are the honest people in the world?

Source: consumerist

Prizes for prostitute-free New Year

SEOUL (Reuters) – The South Korean government is handing out gifts for office workers who promise not to visit brothels this holiday season.

“If you promise yourself to make it a healthy night out at the end of the year, and if you recommend this to others, we are giving lots of prizes,” the Ministry of Gender Equality said in an Internet posting.

The ministry is offering to pay companies whose employees pledge not to buy sex after what are typically alcohol-soaked, year-end parties.

A ministry spokesman confirmed the campaign but declined to answer questions about it.

But a ministry official told the Korea Times daily: “Korean corporate culture that includes heavy drinking is also what makes buying sex acceptable as a way for male-bonding, which is proving to be a hard-to-break ritual.”

The ministry is offering movie tickets based on the number of employees who pledge not to visit prostitutes as well as a cash prize of 1 million won ($1,077) for the company which enlists the most employees in the campaign.

Many South Koreans were bewildered by the plan, saying it was a waste of money and gave the impression that South Korean men cannot keep away from brothels.

“Do they really think men buy sex every time they have a dinner party?” wrote one Korean on a comment page of the South Korea’s largest daily Chosun Ilbo.

Why must Governments try and get in the way of Capitalism?

Del.icio.us : Capitalism

Source:  reuters

Teacher rejects 2nd food donation A Grade 3 student

A Grade 3 student is the little girl who gave too much.

Stephanie Templeton, 8, arrived on two separate occasions with a bag full of canned goods for her North York school’s food drive.

On Tuesday when Stephanie arrived with her second load of six cans, her teacher at Derrydown Public School in the Keele St. and Finch Ave. W. area sent them back home with her because she was making other students feel bad, Stephanie’s dad, Frank Templeton, said yesterday.

“The teacher said she was showing up the other kids,” the shocked father said. “We teach her to do the best she can, and they basically just stuffed the cans back in her knapsack and sent her home with them.”

Tis the season for giving!

Source:  Toronto Sun

Power seller turns bad

This is the kind of garbage that gives ebay a bad name, this guy destroyed what looked like a very profitable business for a few thousand dollars.

Maine bans boozy Santa beer label

A beer distributor says Maine is being a Scrooge by barring it from selling a beer with a label depicting Santa Claus enjoying a pint of brew.

In a complaint filed in federal court, Shelton Brothers accuses the Maine Bureau of Liquor Enforcement of censorship for denying applications for labels for Santa’s Butt Winter Porter and two other beers it wants to sell in Maine.

The dispute recalls a similar squabble last year when Connecticut told Shelton Brothers it had problems with its Seriously Bad Elf ale.

The worst part of this story is not the censorship, as bad as it is, but the fact that the state specifically has to approve wine and beer labels.

The state reviews between 10,000 and 12,000 applications a year for beer and wine labels. It typically denies about a dozen a year because they contain inappropriate language or nudity, or might appeal to children, Fleming said.

“Basically, the standard we use is what are people going to see walking up and down a store aisle,” he said.

10,000 – 12,000 beer and wine labels! 12,000! This is what the states are using our money on, a bunch of stuffed shirts sitting around decided what is appropriate for people to see in a liquor store! To see if it appeals to children! How many children are handing out in a liquor store!

Santa Claus is not going to make eight year old start drinking.

Source: CNN 

‘Hitler salute’ Santas

A German chain of shops has removed miniature wooden Santa Claus figures from its shelves and destroyed them after customers complained it looked like they were giving the stiff-armed Hitler salute that is outlawed.

Josef Lange, a spokesman for the Rossmann chain that has 1,200 outlets, told Reuters on Friday the figures depicting Father Christmas with his right arm stiffly upright towards the sky and holding a sack in his left hand upset some customers.

“We were astonished by the reaction,” Lange said.

“It looks like he’s just pointing up to the sky and we were surprised that anyone saw the so-called ‘Hitler salute’ in that. But we responded and had the entire inventory removed and destroyed.”

Going a little too far to erase the sins of the past?

This source has a little more poetic take on the issue.

If Santa Claus were to move away from the North Pole to one of the more populated parts of the world, what political party would he support? His “peace on Earth” message might indicate a left-of-center stance. But what about his Big Brother (“He knows when you’ve been sleeping. He knows when you’re awake) tendencies? Sounds a lot like the Republicans in the United States these days.

Or maybe he’s a fascist? That, at least, is what a report in the Thursday issue of the tabloid Bild seems to indicate. Germans shopping for Christmas trinkets have been shocked recently to discover row upon row of Santa Clauses looking to all the world as if they are giving the Hitler salute — right arm, straight as an arrow, raised skyward. Never mind that St. Nick is carrying a bag of toys and wearing a silly red hat complete with a white pom-pom. Shoppers were sure — these Santas were Nazis.

Source: CNN

US Currency unfair to blind

A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Treasury Department is violating the law by failing to design and issue currency that is readily distinguishable to blind and visually impaired people.

Judge James Robertson, in a ruling on a suit by the American Council of the Blind, ordered the Treasury to devise a method to tell bills apart.

The judge wrote that the current configuration of paper money violates the Rehabilitation Act’s guarantee of “meaningful access.”

“It can no longer be successfully argued that a blind person has ‘meaningful access’ to currency if she cannot accurately identify paper money without assistance,” Robertson wrote in his ruling.

He further ruled that finding a solution to the problem would not be an “undue burden” on the government and ordered the Treasury Department to begin working on a solution within 30 days.

I shall hold back from my first initial comment, which was “A coin system would solve this problem.” But I decided not too, not because coins are more durable and would have some real metal value, or because of their various size and raised surfaces could be identified without sight… but because it wasn’t really reliant.

But won’t this branch off? Can a blind person use a credit or debt card at a large retail store? Most of them are touch screen, and the telling would probably read it too them… but if the law says they need to be able to do it them self… do all these systems our economy need to change to aid a small minority?

Source: CNN