Not without controversy, a bronze sculpture of Angelina Jolie breastfeeding two babies at once went on display at Mainsite gallery in Norman, Oklahoma. It is New York City artist Daniel Edwards' latest work. After Friday's exhibit, the statue is said to be placed in a public park.
Not in Oklahoma! *gasp*
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Sleep - the most beautiful experience in life - except drink.--W.C. Fields
92.4% of citizenship applicants pass the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) item bank, which consists of 100 questions given to candidates for United States citizenship on the first try. Oklahoma high school students, not so much; how about 2.8%? That's right, fewer than 3% of Oklahoma students can pass the same test required of immigrants that seeking naturalization, and most of them have lived in this country all of their lives. Even worse, no students tested got more than 7 out of 10 questions correct. Zero.
Dismal. We're doomed.
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Sleep - the most beautiful experience in life - except drink.--W.C. Fields
Teen alleges manager at Abercrombie & Fitch refused to hire her because she wears a hijab, a traditional Muslim female head covering in violation of her rights under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discriminating in hiring on the basis of race, religion, gender, or ethnicity. Abercrombie & Fitch has already gone the rounds with the EEOC and lost over their discriminating on the basis of race, and more recently, the company lost a lawsuit where they banished a female employee with a prosthetic arm to the storeroom because she didn't meet their "look policy".
In other news: there are Abercrombie-hating Muslins in Oklahoma!
__________________
Sleep - the most beautiful experience in life - except drink.--W.C. Fields
I would have gotten all ten of those sample questions correct.
I found the full test online. For Americans it's pretty basic stuff. If you paid attention in class you should be able to at least pass it. I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't get all of them correct.
AMERICAN GOVERNMENT
A: Principles of American Democracy
1. What is the supreme law of the land?
2. What does the Constitution do?
3. The idea of self-government is in the first three word of the Constitution. What are these words?
4. What is an amendment?
5. What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution?
6. What is one right or freedom from the First Amendment?*
7. How many amendments does the Constitution have?
8. What did the Declaration of Independence do?
9. What are two rights in the Declaration of Independence?
10. What is freedom of religion?
11. What is the economic system in the United States?*
12. What is the “rule of law”?
B: System of Government
13. Name one branch or part of the government.*
14. What stops one branch of government from becoming too powerful?
15. Who is in charge of the executive branch?
16. Who makes federal laws?
17. What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress?*
18. How many U.S. Senators are there?
19. We elect a U.S. Senator for how many years?
20. Who is one of your state’s U.S. Senators now?*
21. The House of Representatives has how many voting members?
22. We elect a U.S. Representative for how many years?
23. Name your U.S. Representative.
24. Who does a U.S. Senator represent?
25. Why do some states have more Representatives than other states?
26. We elect a President for how many years?
27. In what month do we vote for President?*
28. What is the name of the President of the United States now?*
29. What is the name of the Vice President of the United States now?
30. If the President can no longer serve, who becomes President?
31. If both the President and the Vice President can no longer serve, who becomes President?
32. Who is the Commander in Chief of the military?
33. Who signs bills to become laws?
34. Who vetoes bills?
35. What does the President’s Cabinet do?
36. What are two Cabinet-level positions?
37. What does the judicial branch do?
38. What is the highest court in the United States?
39. How many justices are on the Supreme Court?
40. Who is the Chief Justice of the United States now?
41. Under our Constitution, some powers belong to the federal government. What is one power of the federal
government?
42. Under our Constitution, some powers belong to the states. What is one power of the states?
43. Who is the Governor of your state now?
44. What is the capital of your state?*
45. What are the two major political parties in the United States?*
46. What is the political party of the President now?
47. What is the name of the Speaker of the House of Representatives now?
C: Rights and Responsibilities
48. There are four amendments to the Constitution about who can vote. Describe one of them.
49. What is one responsibility that is only for United States citizens?*
50. Name one right only for United States citizens.
51. What are two rights of everyone living in the United States?
52. What do we show loyalty to when we say the Pledge of Allegiance?
53. What is one promise you make when you become a United States citizen?
54. How old do citizens have to be to vote for President?*
55. What are two ways that Americans can participate in their democracy?
56. When is the last day you can send in federal income tax forms?*
57. When must all men register for the Selective Service?
AMERICAN HISTORY
A: Colonial Period and Independence
58. What is one reason colonists came to America?
59. Who lived in America before the Europeans arrived?
60. What group of people was taken to America and sold as slaves?
61. Why did the colonists fight the British?
62. Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
63. When was the Declaration of Independence adopted?
64. There were 13 original states. Name three.
65. What happened at the Constitutional Convention?
66. When was the Constitution written?
67. The Federalist Papers supported the passage of the U.S. Constitution. Name one of the writers.
68. What is one thing Benjamin Franklin is famous for?
69. Who is the “Father of Our Country”?
70. Who was the first President?*
B: 1800s
71. What territory did the United States buy from France in 1803?
72. Name one war fought by the United States in the 1800s.
73. Name the U.S. war between the North and the South.
74. Name one problem that led to the Civil War.
75. What was one important thing that Abraham Lincoln did?*
76. What did the Emancipation Proclamation do?
77. What did Susan B. Anthony do?
C: Recent American History and Other Important Historical Information
78. Name one war fought by the United States in the 1900s.*
79. Who was President during World War I?
80. Who was President during the Great Depression and World War II?
81. Who did the United States fight in World War II?
82. Before he was President, Eisenhower was a general. What war was he in?
83. During the Cold War, what was the main concern of the United States?
84. What movement tried to end racial discrimination?
85. What did Martin Luther King, Jr. do?*
86. What major event happened on September 11, 2001, in the United States?
87. Name one American Indian tribe in the United States.
INTEGRATED CIVICS
A: Geography
88. Name one of the two longest rivers in the United States.
89. What ocean is on the West Coast of the United States?
90. What ocean is on the East Coast of the United States?
91. Name one U.S. territory.
92. Name one state that borders Canada.
93. Name one state that borders Mexico.
94. What is the capital of the United States?*
95. Where is the Statue of Liberty?*
B: Symbols
96. Why does the flag have 13 stripes?
97. Why does the flag have 50 stars?*
98. What is the name of the national anthem?
C: Holidays
99. When do we celebrate Independence Day?*
100. Name two national U.S. holidays.
As taken from here. This is the text without answers of the Civics Portion of the New Naturalization Test, second link to a pdf.
Cardboard, duct tape, and glue are all are allowed to float your boat in the annual River Rumba Regatta in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Bring your own duct tape and glue and a little paint for decorating, the cardboard is provided.
The engineering school at the university here does an event where they build canoes out of concrete. It's quite impressive.
Also, citizenship test anecdote: My high school American Government teacher had us take one. I was the only student in the class who passed, though I did not get them all right. I couldn't remember who the Chief Justice was at the time for one thing.
Molasses tanker truck overturned on Interstate 244 in Tulsa this morning, traffic stuck for two hours. Tulsa Fire Department and ODOT cleaned up the sticky situation.
I love the smell of molasses in the morning.
Beats napalm.
__________________
Sleep - the most beautiful experience in life - except drink.--W.C. Fields
__________________ Old Pain In The Ass says: I am on a mission from God to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable; to bring faith to the doubtful and doubt to the faithful.
Security guards in Oklahoma City: Say what? Your momma locked you in a closet for 4-1/2 years, whipped you with and extension cord, and burned you with lighter fluid? Well, that's different, son. Come on in and we'll call the cops for ya.
Momma and her boyfriend have been locked up with a $400,000 bail. DHS removed the other six minors from the home, but none of them show any signs of abuse. Neighbors say they had no idea. The boy's 18 year old sister didn't want to talk about it.
Losing my faith in humanity, one [or two] people at a time.
__________________
Sleep - the most beautiful experience in life - except drink.--W.C. Fields
Oklahoma State University graduate, Billings, Oklahoma farmer and former U.S. Senator and two-time Governor of Oklahoma Henry Bellmon died this week at age 88. Bellmon was Oklahoma's first Republican governor when he was elected in 1962. He served the one six year term. In 1968 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, served two terms, returning to his Billings farm in 1981. He ran for Governor again in 1986, citing hard times in Oklahoma would make him "feel like a shirker" if he didn't, and won reelection. Bellmon was his own man, he ruffled feathers on both sides of the aisle. He once refused federal aid to farmers, saying it would make them lose their independence. He oversaw the building of turnpike toll highways and a huge increase in taxes. His biggest opponents in his governorship were members of his of his own party in legislature. He used veto power more than any other governor prior.
Bellmon was a Republican I liked and respected, a man of principle but with a heart. I can't say that about many of the current crop of idiots in his party.
__________________
Sleep - the most beautiful experience in life - except drink.--W.C. Fields
92.4% of citizenship applicants pass the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) item bank, which consists of 100 questions given to candidates for United States citizenship on the first try. Oklahoma high school students, not so much; how about 2.8%? That's right, fewer than 3% of Oklahoma students can pass the same test required of immigrants that seeking naturalization, and most of them have lived in this country all of their lives. Even worse, no students tested got more than 7 out of 10 questions correct. Zero.
Dismal. We're doomed.
I would have gotten two of those answers correct, but "wrong".
First off, it's not the "Democrat Party" any more than it's the "Republic Party".
Secondly, Jefferson didn't write the Declaration of Independence. At best, he wrote the first draft. This initial draft was then referred back to the Committee of Five (Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingstone) for redrafting and then finally to the Continental Congress as a whole for another redraft and vote.
Saying Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence is an oversimplification used by history teachers and cable television documentaries when they don't want to address the complexities of how the document was really written or admit that a significant section condemning the slave trade was cut out.
The comments contain several more excellent points made by various people.
I was rereading and picked out some of the good posts:
Quote:
At least 1 out of 1000 would probably get a 10, I think. [...] Statistically, it's pretty impossible in a sample of 1000 to not have at least one who is in the upper 90% of all students, I think. I did it with the upper 99%. The chance that all students were in the lower 99% purely by chance is something like...0.004%. Or, one out of every 25,000 cases. The chance that none of the students were in the top 10% of all students is astronomical (quite literally).
Quote:
An earlier poster said that you had a one in 25,000 chance to not get a student in the top 1%, and that the chances of not getting someone in the top 10% were astronomical... You said it. the chance that, if you pick randomly 1000 students, you will get none out of the top 10% is of 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000175%, or 1.75*10^-44 %. Ridiculous.
I refuse to believe that there was not one single student, in 1000 polled, that didn't answer seriously.
Quote:
There is something VERY strange going on with this sort of polling. Check this out: a poll was conducted in November 2008 by Goldwater Institute in AZ. They asked the same 10 questions - and got almost exactly the same answers. This is the article: http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/299259
How could two polls conducted by different people in different states give exactly the same result?? How can the 10 "randomly" chosen questions be the same twice?
Quote:
Erm, that Arizona poll that was mentioned IS a Strategic Vision LLC poll. Goldwater was the commissioning organization - "Strategic Vision, LLC conducted the poll of 1,350 Arizona public high school students on November 21-23, 2008."
The pdf of those results is here. The results are disturbingly similar, with some notable exceptions - for example, 11.9 percent of respondents said something other than Democrats and Republicans to the major parties question. There's no breakdown for communists.
Also, the methodology explanation here seems to suggest the questions were open-ended: "The telephone surveyor called a sample of Arizona high school students and read the following statement: "On the next 10 questions, I will be asking you questions about American government and history. Give me your best answer, and it is permissible to respond 'I don’t know.'""
"In considering the profoundly awful results of this survey, it is important to bear in mind that an open-answer format represents a much higher standard than a multiple-choice-format exam, even with high-quality exams such as the NAEP. After all, in a multiple-choice exam, the correct answer is sitting right in front of you."
Quote:
If someone is trying to tell me that out of 1000 thousand students asked to name the two main parties, 430 said democrats and republican, 460 said they didn't know, 111 said republicans and communists and there were NO OTHER ANSWERS... than that someone is lying.
Among the other million things wrong with this is this first question.
"What is the supreme law of the land.
26% The constitution
17% D. Independence
5% B. Rights
4% G. Address
3% E. Proclomation
2% M. Doctrine
41% Don't know"
Bullshit. You are asking me to believe that the question was open-ended but 2% said the Monroe Doctrine and NO ONE IN OKLAHOMA said "The Ten Commandments?"
Bullshit.
Quote:
So far I think every poster has somewhat missed the main point.
The problem with the reported results is not some particular detail about lack of anyone getting a perfect result, or a disagreement with some particular toy models chosen by Nate. It is that the student-to-student variance (in fact the whole distribution) is identical to what you'd get for zero inter-question correlation. That's an insanely unrealistic condition, though a very easy one to put in an amateur Monte-Carlo program.
All tests of this sort show large positive inter-question correlations, which rigorously lead to larger inter-student variance than reported. That's true regardless of whether or not students are on the average knowledgeable, motivated, serious, etc. Therefore these results are fake. That's a statistically robust conclusion.
Last edited by Joshua Adams; 10-01-2009 at 10:50 PM.
If you get one question right, you're more likely to get others right. People taking the tests don't just have a randomly selected collection of facts living in their heads.
In this case, you have easy questions and not quite as easy ones. Maybe not everyone knows that there are 9 Justices on the Supreme Court, but the people who do know that are more or less guaranteed to know who the first president was, and be able to name the two houses of Congress. The results of the poll can be replicated closely by pretty much flipping a coin to determine whether each question is gotten right or wrong. No correlation between questions.
It also would work the other way around; if people didn't know much about US government at all, to the extent of not knowing who George Washington is, they probably wouldn't just happen to know the answers to some of the other questions (Some of the commentators suggested an explanation where students were blowing off the survey and giving dumb answers on purpose, but you would expect, again, that they'd get zero correct in that case instead of just getting some of the questions wrong. But less than 5% did that badly, so it doesn't really explain most of the results. Also, there'd be more variety to the wrong answers).
Last edited by Joshua Adams; 10-02-2009 at 01:53 AM.
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - Bothered that an ambulance driver failed to yield to him as he raced to provide backup on a call - and angered further when he thought the driver flipped him an obscene gesture - state Trooper Daniel Martin decided to stop the ambulance and give the driver a piece of his mind.
Trooper Martin is at it again, beats on a pedestrian during a traffic stop. The traffic stop was for running a stop sign, something that really got him worked up for some reason. I'm guessing 'roid rage.
Last edited by Dingfod; 10-06-2009 at 02:13 AM.
Reason: roids
Re: Only in Oklahoma...
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