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1Our galaxy - the Milky Way - is a spiral galaxy with arms extending from the center like a pinwheel. Our solar system is in the Orion arm of the Milky Way. Our Sun is one of about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. And our galaxy is just one of roughly 100 billion in the visible universe.

To justify their campaign, ed reformers repeat, mantra-like, that U.S. students are trailing far behind their peers in other nations, that U.S. public schools are failing. The claims are specious. Two of the three major international tests—the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and the Trends in International Math and Science Study—break down student scores according to the poverty rate in each school. The tests are given every five years. The most recent results (2006) showed the following: students in U.S. schools where the poverty rate was less than 10 percent ranked first in reading, first in science, and third in math. When the poverty rate was 10 percent to 25 percent, U.S. students still ranked first in reading and science. But as the poverty rate rose still higher, students ranked lower and lower. Twenty percent of all U.S. schools have poverty rates over 75 percent. The average ranking of American students reflects this. The problem is not public schools; it is poverty. And as dozens of studies have shown, the gap in cognitive, physical, and social development between children in poverty and middle-class children is set by age three.

Drilling students on sample questions for weeks before a state test will not improve their education. The truly excellent charter schools depend on foundation money and their prerogative to send low-performing students back to traditional public schools. They cannot be replicated to serve millions of low-income children. Yet the reform movement, led by Gates, Broad, and Walton, has convinced most Americans who have an opinion about education (including most liberals) that their agenda deserves support.

THE COST of K–12 public schooling in the United States comes to well over $500 billion per year. So, how much influence could anyone in the private sector exert by controlling just a few billion dollars of that immense sum? Decisive influence, it turns out. A few billion dollars in private foundation money, strategically invested every year

Regulatory Changes by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

FERC Orders 888 and 889

On April 24, 1996, FERC issued Orders 888 and 889, which encourage wholesale competition.  The primary objective of these orders is the elimination of monopoly power over the transmission of electricity.  To achieve this objective, FERC requires all public utilities that own, control, or operate facilities used for transmitting electric energy in interstate commerce to: file open access nondiscriminatory transmission tariffs containing minimum terms and conditions, take transmission service (including ancillary services) for their own new wholesale sales and purchases of electricity under open access tariffs, develop and maintain a same-time information system that will give existing and potential  users the same access to transmission information that the public utility enjoys, and separate the transmission from generating and marketing functions and communications.

The price valued the digital pin board company, which lets people save images and links from around the web, at $12.7 billion. That is a little above its last private fund-raising round, which had pegged the company at $12 billion.By selling at $19 a share, Pinterest raised $1.6 billion from big investors

In its I.P.O. prospectus, Pinterest emphasized its differences from some of those services. Pinterest is not a social media app for hanging out with celebrities or broadcasting one’s life, the company said. It is meant to be personal. The company’s 250 million monthly active users, called “pinners,” come to the site to plan their lives, including home projects, weddings and meals.

While methods of hydrogen production that do not use fossil fuel would be more sustainable

Just recently, the French and Belgian authorities cooked up a massive bailout of the French bank Dexia, whose biggest trading partners included, surprise, surprise, Goldman, Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Here's how the New York Times explained the bailout: To limit damage from Dexia’s collapse, the bailout fashioned by the French and Belgian governments may make these banks and other creditors whole — that is, paid in full for potentially tens of billions of euros they are owed. This would enable Dexia’s creditors and trading partners to avoid losses they might otherwise suffer... When was the last time the government stepped into help you "avoid losses you might otherwise suffer?" But that's the reality we live in. When Joe Homeowner bought too much house, essentially betting that home prices would go up, and losing his bet when they dropped, he was an irresponsible putz who shouldn’t whine about being put on the street. But when banks bet billions on a firm like AIG that was heavily invested in mortgages, they were making the same bet that Joe Homeowner made, leaving themselves hugely exposed to a sudden drop in home prices. But instead of being asked to "suck it in and cope" when that bet failed, the banks instead went straight to Washington for a bailout -- and got it.

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