Barbra Streisand picked up an honorary degree from Hebrew University this week, and used her time at the podium to pick a fight with orthodox Jews, who embrace traditional restrictions on the role of women in public worship.
CBS News reports:
Barbra Streisand waded into one of Israel’s touchiest issues during the first major stop on her tour of the country — Jewish religious practices that separate men and women.
Speaking at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on Monday, she took aim at cases of ultra-Orthodox Jews targeting women.
“It’s distressing to read about women in Israel being forced to sit in the back of the bus,” she said, “or when we hear about `Women of the Wall’ having metal chairs thrown at them when they attempt to peacefully and legally pray.”
She was referring to isolated incidents in which ultra-Orthodox men tried to force women to sit separately at the rear of buses that go through their neighborhoods, as well as more serious clashes in which ultra-Orthodox Jews tried to prevent women donning prayer shawls and carrying Torah scrolls from praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the holiest site where Jews can worship…
Perhaps it’s every kid’s dream – as they slave away at their obligatory school science project - that their findings will rock the scientific community.
Well, it just so happens – that happened!
A group of ninth-graders at a school in Denmark tried to grow some fast-acting seedlings next to a Wi-Fi router and the little buggers wouldn’t sprout, and kind of died. But the same seeds in a room away from the Wi-Fi thrived.
Mother Nature Network reports:
The students placed six trays filled with Lepidium sativum, a type of garden cress, into a room without radiation, and six trays of the seeds into another room next to two routers that according to the girls’ calculations, emitted about the same type of radiation as an ordinary cellphone.
Over the next 12 days, the girls observed, measured, weighed and photographed their results. By the end of the experiment the results were blatantly obvious — the cress seeds placed near the router had not grown. Many of them were completely dead. Meanwhile, the cress seeds planted in the other room, away from the routers, thrived.
The experiment earned the girls top honors in a regional science competition and the interest of scientists around the world … (and) a neuroscience professor at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, is interested in repeating the experiment in a controlled professional scientific environment
A community college professor forced her students to wear ribbons in support of gay rights and allegedly told her class people who support the traditional definition of marriage are “uneducated bigots” who “attack homosexuals with hate,” reports Todd Starnes of Fox News.
Students in the Tennessee-based Columbia State Community College psychology class were directed to wear “Rainbow Coalition” ribbons for a day and express support for the homosexual community, Travis Barham, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom, told Starnes.
Some students objected to the assignment, citing religious exemptions, but Barham told Fox News the professor dismissed students’ concerns as irrelevant.
The students were also barred from defending or explaining any other views regarding homosexual conduct, dismissing such arguments as ‘throwing Bible verses’ at her,” the attorney said.
“When students objected to how she was pushing her personal views on the class, she explained that it is her job ‘to educate the ignorant and uneducated elements of society,’ that oppose this movement’s demands and to correct their ‘hateful and close-minded’ views,” Barham said.
New York University has loaned millions of dollars to select faculty and administrators for them to buy vacation homes, an unprecedented compensation deal critics say is excessive.
Elite colleges and universities have been known to offer their chief executives all sorts of bonuses, including high pay, cars and second residences. But NYU may be the first university to help pay for luxurious vacation homes in the Hamptons for not just its president, but also high profile faculty and administrators.
NYU loaned its president, John Sexton, $1 million to buy a three-lot beach house on Fire Island. The university helped Law School Dean Richard Revesz pay for two homes: one in West Village and the other on a 65-acre property alongside the Housatonic River, according to The New York Times.
Fix contributor Ian Tuttle reports for National Review Online on the troubling story of Jared Marcum, a West Virginia eighth grader who now faces criminal charges of “obstructing an officer” after he refused to remove a t-shirt that featured the logo of the National Rifle Association, and school officials called a police officer to compel him.
