You’re probably asking yourself: why would James Franco or anyone else want a Master’s degree in writing?  Well, some people, like Franco, go to better their writing and education because they can.  But other areas are opened up once you achieve higher level education in the writing sector.  You can teach writing or English, you can become a professor, work in publishing, hone in on your writing skills and find the connections via your professors to become published, etc.

Don’t be so hard on you writer friends.  They’re doing a great thing!

When asked why after years of success as a rock musician he felt the need to study Bach’s chorales and four-part harmonies, Flea said, “Music is made up out of these building blocks. Studying how these blocks go together and what they consist of and the math of how it works — it’s all the same stuff; it’s just different aesthetics that we’re talking about.”

Flea, whose real name is Michael Peter Balzary, knows the value of music in school. He started the Silver Lake Music Conservatory after returning to his public high school and finding the music practice rooms neglected due to lack of funding.

- PerezHilton.com

 

Up this time: the Republican views.  

While McCain’s policy on “No Child Left Behind” is unclear, he does believe that teachers should be of the highest caliber and rewarded for their effectiveness.  

Besides that, the policy seems sort of hard to understand, and I’m not quite sure if it even says anything at all.  So much for being completely unbiased.  If anyone can decipher a thing from his website, feel free to comment.  Click here.

Obama and Biden want to change Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” policy.  They want to fund the law on it and they want to have different assessments of progress, other than standardized tests, which many many people seem to not do well on, despite how much they know or have learned.  They also want to improve science education, which seems to be floundering because there aren’t as many qualified teachers for the subject.  And the best part of the policy probably has to do with making college more affordable.  Statistically, over 2 million people by the year 2012 will not attend college because they cannot afford it, and those that will go will come out with, on average, $19,000 in debt.

All of these things sound good to me!  To learn more about the education reforms, go to Obama’s website and read up on the issue!  Next up: McCain/Palin.

Escalating its efforts to portray Senator Barack Obama as a candidate whose values fall outside the mainstream, the campaign of SenatorJohn McCain on Tuesday unveiled a new television advertisement claiming that Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee, favors “comprehensive sex education” for kindergarten students.

“Learning about sex before learning to read?” the narrator asks in the 30-second advertisement, which the campaign says will be shown in battleground states and on national cable. The commercial also asserts that a sex-education bill introduced in Illinois, which Mr. Obama did not sponsor and which never became law, is his “one accomplishment” in the field of education.

Both sets of accusations, however, seriously distort the record.

Click here to read the rest of the article.  And stay tuned for a detailed description of both candidates education views!

Green collar workers include professionals such as conservation movement workers, environmental consultants, environmental or biological systems engineers, green building architects, holistic passive solar building designers, solar energy and wind energy engineers, green vehicle engineers, organic farmers, environmental lawyers, ecology educators, and ecotechnology workers. They also include vocational or trade-level employment: electricians who install solar panels, plumbers who install solar water heaters, and construction workers who build energy-efficient green buildings, wind power farms, or other clean, renewable, sustainable future energy development workers could all be considered green jobs.

Of course, there are more companies that are going green every day by eliminating paper use (and only using email and the internet, as opposed to faxes and mass mailings) and using renewable energy.  Greenforall.org is a great resource to find out how to get involved in this sect of the economy and help the planet out while doing so!

There are millions of people that seem to not have a problem talking about themselves in the 3rd person, and this is due to Facebook status messages.  I’m thankful that this hasn’t yet spilled over into real life like “LOLSpeak” has, but I have been noticing a certain trend in people’s status updates.  I thought that perhaps it was just my friends, but I’ve found that the same 5 statuses (stati?) can be found over any grouping of people.

To prove this, I did a search of other Sara’s in the New York, NY network.  First, there is the “real status.”  Some people actually think others care about what they are doing.  

Example: “Sara is researching gay TV shows!  Really!” Cool, Sara!  Are you outing yourself, or are you looking to become a fag hag?! See also: “Sara is cold.” Um… k?

Next, is the douche bag on your friends list that Seems To Find It Necessary To Write Every Word Starting With A Capital Letter. Example: Sara is Excited To See Her Beau Today! I Hate You So Much! I hope your boyfriend dumps you.

There is also the type of person that has weird evasive statuses that are just waiting for a, “What is wrong with you?” or “What’s with your FB status?” instant message. Example: Sara is really fucked up and doesn’t even want to finish this. Okay? So don’t finish it. Whatever “it” is. Is “it” life? If you really wanted to die, you wouldn’t announce it via Facebook status feed. Just sayin’.  Save that shit for your LiveJournal.

Perhaps almost worse than The Person That Writes Like This is the person that refuses to be grammatically correct in a field that sort of tries to force them to do so. Example: Sara who invented homework in the summer because i want to kill them. WTF does that even mean? Are you trying to ask a question? Ugh.

My personal favorite is the kind of status message that makes clever song lyric references. Example: Sara is not going to write you a love song because you ask for it. (Referencing Bareilles’ “Love Song”). Also in this category, fall most pop culture references.

Am I missing any? I think this spread of Saras covered it… But more to come if/as I find them.

It’s true.  On average, a college student prints off about 48 pages of paper per month.  By being an online student, you could save – about 400 pages of paper per school year.  

According to the Environmental Protection Agency:

• - Every ton of paper made from recycled materials saves about 17 trees.
• - Recycling paper uses 60% less energy than manufacturing paper from virgin timber.
• - Nearly 81.3 million tons of paper and paperboard waste was generated in the U.S. in 1994.
• - Americans throw away enough office and writing paper annually to build a wall 12 feet high stretching from Los Angeles to New York City.
• - Paper and paperboard constituted the largest portion of the U.S. municipal solid waste in 1999, representing 38.1% of the total waste by weight.

So the next time someone accuses you of being selfish or lazy by being an online student, just tell them you’re doing your part to go green (and save time and money in the long run!)

Brian May, founder of the overwrought, operatic 70s rock band Queen—known for its song “We are the Champions”—finally finished his doctoral thesis in astrophysics. (He got the Ph.D last year; which he began 30 years ago but got busy.) According to Livescience, his thesis “examines the mysterious phenomenon known as Zodiacal light, a misty diffuse cone of light that appears in the western sky after sunset and in the eastern sky before sunrise.”