“So when you go off the college and a professor immediately confronts you with this idea about God and says to you ‘God does not exist. Prove that he exists.’ And the first response from any student is to go ‘Well, I don’t know how to prove that, so God must not exist, so I’m just going to be quiet and go over into the corner and I will allow this professor to say whatever he wants,’” Forest said. “You need to be able to stand up in that class and say ‘Professor, you prove that God doesn’t exist.’”
Forest said college professors and “everybody else in the world” is trying to put the burden of proof on the students for their beliefs and “you need to be able to defend what you need to defend.”
Okay, aside from the fact the vast majority of professors don't and wouldn't confront a student in such a fashion, and that whole meme is straight out of a demented pastor's sermon, that is not how science works. At all. And that's not how education, especially higher education, works either. The goal is to jumpstart the critical thinking skills of students, not reinforce the idea they already know everything they need to know. But the most telling aspect of Forest's mind-numbing address to students is about government:
MCCRAE DOWLESS REFUSES TO BE INTERVIEWED BY ELECTIONS OFFICIALS: Dowless declined interviews back in December, and State Board of Elections spokesman Patrick Gannon confirmed Thursday that hasn't changed. Gannon said he couldn't confirm whether Dowless has been subpoenaed for records. The state board dubbed Dowless a "person of interest" in its investigation weeks ago. Several people have told reporters that Dowless paid them to pick up absentee ballots, a felony under North Carolina law due to tampering concerns. It's unclear whether Dowless has been interviewed by criminal investigators. Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman's office is overseeing that case, and she declined to say Thursday evening. She said earlier this week that she hopes the inquiry will wrap in 30 to 60 days. https://www.wral.com/dowless-key-figure-in-9th-district-inquiry-still-won-t-submit-to-state-intervie...
Lynchburg, Virginia -- A new poll just released by the Sparkle Group shows that North Carolinians are extremely unhappy with Republicans representing them in Congress. With an average approval rating of just 7%, no GOP member can be considered safe in the upcoming election cycle.
As usual, Republican temper tantrums hurt the poor first and hardest:
"Funding these contracts is necessary to keep about 150, 000 deeply poor, mostly seniors and people with disabilities safely and affordably housed," said Diane Yentel, President and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Yentel worries that, with President Trump and Congressional Democrats at an impasse over border wall funding, the government will not reopen anytime soon. And that may force property owners to make business decisions that could adversely impact tenants. "Eventually these owners will have to resort to either significant rent hikes or evictions of these lowest-income renters," Yentel said.
Take a closer look at that map. North Carolina is literally blanketed with already expired or soon to be expired HUD contracts. Each dot represents dozens if not hundreds of folks who may be forced out of their homes because the Republican Party can't or won't keep their spoiled rich brat under control. More details:
MORE DIRTY DETAILS EMERGE ABOUT TIM MOORE'S CHICKEN PLANT DEAL: "There's a smoking-gun email that shows that Tim Moore's staff person got the Department of Environmental Quality to fast-track a reclassification of this property," Hall said. "[Cameron] gets tax breaks worth hundreds of thousands of dollars when you reclassify the land [and] put it in the brownfields program." Following the sale, just before the 2016 election, large campaign checks from Cameron started rolling in: $100,000 to the North Carolina Republican Party. $25,000 to Moore's House Republican caucus. $500,000 to a political-action committee supporting then-Gov. Pat McCrory. Shortly before McCrory left office, a state agency awarded Mountaire a $1.5 million grant for a wastewater system for the Siler City plant. https://www.wral.com/watchdog-seeks-investigation-of-donations-to-gop-from-executive-who-bought-chic...
You'd think UNC would be hustling like heck to get donations for me. I'm a wealthy alum married to a woman who used to be chair of the faculty. Together we give a great deal of money to educational and advocacy organizations in North Carolina. In any reasonable world, I would be at the top of UNC's development hit-list. But I'm not.
The Board of Governors accepted Folt’s resignation during a closed emergency meeting Tuesday afternoon, specifying a date months earlier than the chancellor had intended to leave. The board accepted the resignation effective Jan. 31, whereas Folt had said she planned to step down after commencement, scheduled for May.
“She resigned, we accepted it,” said Harry Smith, Board of Governors chair, during a question-and-answer session with reporters, the audio of which was provided to Inside Higher Ed. “We just felt it was better to compress the timeline and then work more toward a healing process.”
Compress the timeline? Reducing 4 1/2 months to a couple weeks is a hell of a lot more than "compressing the timeline." And as far as I'm concerned, the only "healing process" that will actually work is to purge the UNC Board of Governors of any and all political appointees, and a good place to start is with the Chairman himself, whose ethics are more than a little strained:
VANCE COUNTY SCHOOLS CUT BACK ON SCHOOL LUNCHES WITHOUT FEDERAL ASSISTANCE: The federal government’s budget stalemate over border security is causing lunches to shrink at one eastern North Carolina school district. Vance County Schools officials announced on Facebook late Tuesday that lunch menus “have been revised to a minimum level to conserve food and funding” starting Jan. 21. The county is about 50 miles northeast of Durham, along the Virginia state line. Fresh produce, bottled juices and water, and even ice cream are among the items being nixed. “The Vance County Schools Nutrition Program for students is self-supporting with federal funds providing meals,” says the post. “We hope that normal lunch menus can be resumed as soon as possible once the shutdown has ended.” https://www.newsobserver.com/news/nation-world/national/article224611465.html
HARRIS IS ALL-OF-A-SUDDEN CONCERNED ABOUT VOTERS' RIGHTS: The campaign of Republican Mark Harris is moving forward with an effort to force the State Board of Elections to certify the result of the 2018 9th Congressional District race by court action, despite ongoing investigations into absentee ballot irregularities in several southeastern North Carolina counties. Harris filed a legal brief Monday in support of his request for a writ of mandamus, a court order that forces a public agency to exercise one of its responsibilities. He's asking a Wake County Superior Court judge to command state elections officials to immediately certify the election results and release any investigative materials into election irregularities. "By leaving the Ninth District race undecided, the Bipartisan Board has struck a blow to representative democracy," the brief filed on Harris' behalf reads. "It effectively has disfranchised the more than 778,000 people living in the Ninth District by bureaucratic fiat, denying them representation in the 116th Congress." https://www.wral.com/in-court-documents-harris-argues-state-board-should-certify-9th-district-result...
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