Bag of Randomness

Posted in Goofy | 4 Comments

Judge: Student’s Facebook rants about teacher are protected speech

A student who set up a Facebook page to complain about her teacher — and was later suspended — had every right to do so under the First Amendment, a federal magistrate has ruled.

The ruling not only allows Katherine “Katie” Evans’ suit against the principal to move forward, it could set a precedent in cases involving speech and social networking on the Internet, experts say.

n 2007, Evans, then a senior at Pembroke Pines Charter High School, created a Facebook page where she vented about “the worst teacher I’ve ever met.”

But instead of other students expressing their dislike of the teacher, most defended the teacher and attacked Evans.

A couple days later, Evans took the page down.

But after Principal Peter Bayer found out about it, he bumped Evan from her Advanced Placement classes, putting her in classes with less prestige, and suspended her for three days.

In late 2008, Evans filed suit against the principal, asking that the suspension be ruled unconstitutional and reversed, that the documents be removed from her file at the school and that she receive reimbursement for attorney fees.

Evans, an honors student, was concerned that the suspension would tarnish her academic record and hurt her chances in graduate school and her career.

Full Article

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2010 Encyclopaedia Britannica Set

Out of curiosity, I decided to see if you can still purchase an entire printed encyclopaedia* set, it turns out you can.

Link

I wonder what goes out of date faster, buying a new computer (since technology advances ever so quickly) or buying a set of encyclopaedia.

Somewhat related – I wish I could opt out of having a gargantuan phone book delivered to my door.

*I had no idea that there a an "a" between the "p" and the "e" - personally, I think
it looks a little weird.
Posted in Interesting, Pop Culture | 1 Comment

Support all your favorite organizations from a single monthly donation

Givv.org is a site that makes monthly giving easier. It does this by letting you set up a single monthly budget for all your giving and divide it up across as many recipient organizations as you want. This keeps you in control, is more flexible, and lets you give to more different organizations than you ever could on your own. You can give anonymously and in small amounts. Tax records are easy. And you can see what others are giving to, which can help you decide what to give to.

People use Givv.org to give to important nonprofits, charities, churches, open source software projects, their alma mater, favorite podcasts, and more. It’s automatic, it’s easy, and it’s free.

Givv.org was created to solve the problem of too many worthy nonprofits, not enough time. You support lots of ideas and organizations, but it’s not realistic to give them all access to your credit cards for monthly pledges. Nor are you likely to keep escalating our donation amount every time you learn about a new cause worth supporting (you probably can’t afford to!). But if you can set a budget, then allocate it easily…problem solved.

The theory being testing here is that people will give more freely, to more recipients, if it’s easier to do.


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