Chicago school bans packed lunches, It’s tray lunches only or STARVE!

Students who attend Chicago’s Little Village Academy public school get nothing but nutritional tough love during their lunch period each day. The students can either eat the cafeteria food–or go hungry. Only students with allergies are allowed to bring a homemade lunch to school, the Chicago Tribune reports.

“Nutrition wise, it is better for the children to eat at the school,” principal Elsa Carmona told the paper of the years-old policy. “It’s about … the excellent quality food that they are able to serve (in the lunchroom). It’s milk versus a Coke.”

But students said they would rather bring their own lunch to school in the time-honored tradition of the brown paper bag. “They’re afraid that we’ll all bring in greasy food instead of healthy food and it won’t be as good as what they give us at school,” student Yesenia Gutierrez told the paper. “It’s really lame.”

One commenter, who says her children attend a different Chicago public school, writes, “I can accept if they want to ban soda, but to tell me I can’t send a lunch with my child. ARE YOU KIDDING ME????”

For parents whose kids do not qualify for free or reduced price school lunches, the $2.25 daily cafeteria price can also tally more than a homemade lunch. “We don’t spend anywhere close to that on my son’s daily intake of a sandwich (lovingly cut into the shape of a Star Wars ship), Goldfish crackers and milk,” Northwestern education policy professor Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach told the paper in an email. She told The Lookout parents at her child’s public school would be upset if they tried to ban homemade lunches.

“I think that lots of parents at least at my child’s school do think that what they pack is more nutritious [than school lunches],” she said.  A Chicago public school teacher started a blog to protest the city’s school lunches, and last year the schools tightened their nutrition standards for cafeteria-served school lunches. Every lunch must contain whole grains, only reduced-fat salad dressings and mayonnaise are offered as condiments, and the meals must feature a different vegetable each day. Meal providers also must reduce sodium content by 5 percent annually. About 86 percent of the district’s students qualify for free or reduced price school lunches because their families live close to the poverty line.more

thank you battleskin88

Homeowners aren't doing as much as they think to save energy

Utilities and manufacturers who want to motivate consumers to buy and use green products sometimes turn to Suzanne Shelton. Her Knoxville, Tenn., advertising company, the Shelton Group, works "to bring sustainability to the masses."

Many Americans think they've done plenty to make their homes more energy-efficient but are frustrated that they're not seeing the results in lower utility bills, according to Shelton's sixth annual Energy Pulse survey. What's more, she said, homeowners think they've gone about as far as they can to improve their homes' energy efficiency.

She talked about what we'll do — and won't do — for our homes:

Your research shows that people think they've done plenty to improve their home-energy footprint, yet you think they're fooling themselves. Why?

There's a gross misperception that Americans think they've done a lot more than they have. Ninety percent of the population says they've changed their habits to be more energy-efficient, and 77% of them say they've changed most of their incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescent lights or CFLs. But we know that's overstated. If it were true that people had changed their behavior, energy consumption would have gone down, but it hasn't.

Do their actions go beyond changing their light bulbs?

When we look at the profiles of Americans who we know are most inclined to do these kinds of things — they have the disposable income, they've upgraded their heating/cooling/air conditioning to be more energy-efficient, they've purchased Energy Star products, etc. — they say, "Thank you very much, I'm done now." They think they've done enough for their part.

One-third of people who have made those improvements say they haven't seen the improvements [in their utility bills] that they expected. And they say, "I've done a lot and I didn't see any savings from it, why should I bother?"

Is that dearth of savings because utility rates are going up?

That's part of it. They're also using more electricity — with cellphones, HDTVs, laptops and computers, they're using more devices than ever before, and they don't realize it.

People think that because they've installed CFLs, they can leave the lights on all the time. If they've bought [an energy-efficient] water heater, they can take long showers.

What would you consider to be the mainstream attitude about conservation today?

House Speaker criticized over comments during session | WTVN Local News

House Speaker criticized over comments during session | WTVN Local News: "Speaker Bill Batchelder is heard cursing and making a sarcastic comment about Senate Bill 5 opponents as they left the House chambers Wednesday."

Tablet with Europe’s oldest Greek-speaking Mycenaean writing found

A fragment of a clay tablet discovered in an olive grove in Greece last year shows the oldest known decipherable writing in Europe.

The clay tablet, roughly 2.5 cm tall and 4 cm wide, is marked by an early writing system known as Linear B, which consisted of 87 single-syllable signs and was used to record economic matters.

National Geographic News reports the writing was done by a Greek-speaking Mycenaean scribe between 1450 and 1350 B.C.

The Early Helladic Period, ~2750-2000 BC

Somewhere between 3000 BC and 2000 BC, the lands of Greece were settled by a metal-using agricultural people who spoke a language other than Indo-European. Some of the names they gave their villages were preserved by the Greeks, names, for instance, ending in “-ssos.” We know next to nothing of these people, their religion, their cultural memory, their language, or their everyday experience. The period when they dominated Greece, called the “Early Helladic” period, seemed to be one of comparative quiet and peace. All that ended around 2000 BC; the early Helladic sites and villages were destroyed in fire or abandoned outright. An invader had entered the stage, one that quickly dominated the landscape: the Greek.

The Middle Helladic Period, ~2000 BC-1550 BC

This period of conquest and settlement by the Greeks makes up the Middle Helladic period. These new invaders settled all the parts of Greece, in some instances settling peacefully with the previous inhabitants, and began to dominate Greek culture. They spoke an Indo-European language; in fact, they spoke Greek. Their society was primarily based on warfare; their leaders were essentially war-chiefs. They had settled a difficult land: the Greek mainland is hot, dry and rocky. Agriculture is difficult, but some crops grow extremely well, such as grapes and olives. The coastal settlers relied heavily on fishing for their diet. In spite of the ruggedness of their life and the harshness of their social organization, these early Greeks traded with a civilization to the south, the Minoans. Their contact with the Minoans was instantly fruitful; they began to urbanize somewhere in the Middle Helladic period and translated their culture into a civilization.

The Late Helladic Period, ~1550 BC-1150 BC

The transition between the Middle and Late Helladic periods is indistinguishable, for the Greek settlers had begun building the rudiments of a civilization earlier in the millenium. Around 1600 BC, though, these urban centers began to thrive and the Greek settlers entered their first major period of cultural creativity.more

Excavations in the Greek village of Iklaina led to the tablet’s discovery. Dig director Michael Cosmopoulos claims the tablet was a complete surprise to the archeologists, who uncovered evidence of an early Mycenaean palace, giant terrace walls, murals and an advanced drainage system in the area.

Until now, Mycenaean tablets this old weren’t thought to exist; the find precedes previous tablets by 150 years. Furthermore, tablets had only been found in major palaces. Historians had assumed Pylos (made famous by the “Iliad”) and Mycenae were the major Mycenaean state capitals.

“Iklaina could potentially challenge what we know about the origins of states in ancient Greece,” Cosmopoulos said. “Not only does it push the origins of those states back in time by at least a century and a half, but the tablet shows that literacy and bureaucracy appeared earlier and were more widespread than what we had thought until now. We still have a lot to learn about the ancient world.”more

Archeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns (1996)

Greece

The architecture and design of Mycenae and Tiryns, such as the Lion Gate and the Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae and the walls of Tiryns, are outstanding examples of human creative genius.

The Mycenaean civilization, as exemplified by Mycenae and Tiryns, had a profound effect on the development of classical Greek architecture and urban design, and consequently also on contemporary cultural forms.

Mycenae and Tiryns represent the apogee of the Mycenaean civilization, which laid the foundations for the evolution of later European cultures.

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(500)Muslim Burka For You – (2,000) Burka For St. George.

(500)Muslim Burka For You – (2,000) Burka For St. George.

A demonstration by far-right group the English Defence League again descended into violence today as extremists began fighting among themselves.

Around 2,000 ‘protestors’ – some wearing makeshift Burqas daubed in St George’s Cross – took to the streets of Blackburn town centre, supposedly to demonstrate at the alleged spread of Sharia Law and militant Islamism.

The East Lancashire town, which has a large Asian population, was brought to a standstill by a huge police operation designed to segregate EDL marchers from a rival protest by Unite Against Fascism.

But trouble flared as skirmishes broke out among EDL supporters.

Despite the violence, organisers insisted the demonstration had been ‘good’.

EDL spokesman Tony Curtis claimed clashes had broken out between the main body of marchers and a more extreme splinter group.

He added: ‘Once we got rid of the troublemakers it got better. It was a good demonstration.’

This was the first EDL demonstration to take place in East Lancashire, after previous marches in Luton, Stoke and Bradford all ended in skirmishes between EDL supporters, police and UAF protestors.

Some marchers concealed their faces with a St George’s mask, while others covered their heads with mock Burqas. Others sparked flares and carried banners, some carrying the Star of David.

Roads were closed and shops and pubs shut, with a large area of the town centre, which is the constituency town of former Home Secretary Jack Straw, declared a no-go area.

The region has a history of racial tension, with nearby Burnley the victim of rioting in June 2001. But police thanked the local community for behaving peacefully.

Hundreds of officers – some drafted from Cumbria – were employed to maintain order, along with council staff and community volunteers.

Divisional commander Bob Eastwood expressed some satisfaction that police, along with mounted officers and steel barriers, were able to keep the two sides apart.

He said: ‘We estimate that around 2,000 EDL and about 500 counter demonstrators took part in today’s events.

‘Although there were minor scuffles amongst the EDL demonstrators, there was no significant disorder.Read more: