Time 8:30 AM – 9:30 AM
Subject DESIGN REVIEW
Location 318
Recurrence Occurs the fourth Tuesday of every 1 month effective 11/22/2011 until 11/22/2011 from 8:30 AM to 9:30 AM
Reminder 15 minutes
SARAH @ 7825
Categories ROOM 318

Time 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Subject VANDERBURGH ALCOHOL BOARD
Location 301
Recurrence Occurs the fourth Tuesday of every 1 month effective 11/22/2011 until 11/22/2011 from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Reminder 15 minutes
Scott Bedwell 812-882-1291
Categories ROOM 301

Time 4:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Subject SOLID WASTE DISTRICT BOARD
Location 301
Recurrence Occurs the fourth Tuesday of every 1 month effective 11/22/2011 until 11/22/2011 from 4:00 PM to 4:30 PM
Reminder 15 minutes
JOE BALLARD @ 7800
Categories ROOM 307

Time 4:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Subject SOLID WASTE DISTRICT BOARD
Location 301
Recurrence Occurs the fourth Tuesday of every 1 month effective 11/22/2011 until 11/22/2011 from 4:00 PM to 4:30 PM
Reminder 15 minutes
JOE BALLARD @ 7800
Categories ROOM 301, ROOM 307

Greetings from Lacy, a loving 1-year-old DSH. This cross eyed cricket is sure to bring a lot of love and joy into your home. Lacy loves the company of other cats but will do just fine in a home where she is the center of attention. She enjoys chasing toy mice and pouncing on paper sacks. Lacy has not lived with children but her laid back personality will fit quite nicely into a home with kids. She would prefer to find a home without a K9 companion as they make her just a tad bit nervous. For more information on how to make Lacy a member of your family, visit www.vhslifesaver.org or call (812) 426-2563.

North and Reitz high schools and Thompkins Middle School “We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution” teams advanced to the state competition after participating in the district competition held Nov. 15. North finished first in the high school competition with a score of 866. Reitz finished second with a score of 865 and qualified for the state competition through a wild card slot. Both teams will participate in the state competition scheduled for Dec. 18. Thompkins Team A completed the competition with a score of 843 and will compete at the state level on Dec. 17. Both middle and high school state competitions will be held at Plainfield High School in Plainefield, Ind., west of Indianapolis.

The program teaches young people about the principles and values that the Constitution and Bill of Rights embody, and aims to give students a thorough understanding of their rights and responsibilities as American citizens. The program forces students to analyze constitutional principles and apply them to day-to-day life.

A panel of judges test the expertise of the teams in various areas based on the We the People text designed for the competition. Students address topics such as the history and philosophical ideas underlying the Constitution; the development and expansion of the Bill of Rights; and the roles of citizens in American democracy.

Other schools who placed at the district competition, but did not automatically advance to the state level, include: Bosse High School that placed third, with a score of 733; Helfrich Park STEM Academy that placed third with a score of 803; and another team from Thompkins Middle School that came in fourth with a score of 799.

The City County Observer is pleased to provide our readers with a scholarly study on Right to Work laws from the perspective of employers, employees, unions, and wealth creation. This topic promises to be one of the more important and controversial ones that the Indiana Legislature will be addressing this year and we want to be a part of educating our fellow Hoosiers about this topic so that an our representatives truly understand the will of the governed after the governed have taken the time to read and understand a subject that we are sure will draw much attention.

This scholarly study is only 54 pages and is not partisan so please dig in and enjoy.

Cooper-right-to-work-laws

November 21, 2011

News Release

STATEHOUSE – “Today marks the beginning of the freedom campaign for Hoosier workers. While we are the envy of the Midwest in our job creation efforts, economic development experts tell us that removing the last barriers to job creation in our state will help the quarter of a million unemployed Hoosiers get back to work. That is why my top priority this session is to make Indiana the 23rd Right to Work state in the nation.

“Right to Work isn’t about Unions – it is about freedom and economic opportunity. It is about giving all Hoosiers the freedom to choose a job, decide how their hard earned money is spent and bring more employment opportunities to Indiana.

“With the national economic malaise, and our unemployment rate stubbornly hovering around 9 percent, we can’t afford to not address this issue this session. Right to Work means back to work for the unemployed. This is America, Hoosiers deserve this freedom.”

Senate Pro Tempore Senator Long (R-Fort Wayne) issued the following statement following a joint press conference where he announced he will pursue Right to Work legislation this session to bring more economic development opportunity for Hoosiers:

STATEHOUSE – “While we’ve been aggressive in drawing businesses to our state, the realities of the current global economy are clear: without a Right to Work law in Indiana, companies will continue to overlook us and take jobs either out of state or overseas. Hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers are unemployed and we must do everything in our power to ensure Indiana is the best place for jobs to locate. A dynamic and growing economy is critical to our state’s future. To ensure that becomes a reality, we must remove any additional barriers preventing companies and businesses from expanding or locating in Indiana.”

Source: Indiana House Media Department, Indiana Senate Communications.

The New York Times today includes a study about the difference between skills that can be acquired simply by practice or repetition and skills that seem to rely on native intelligence. In some things practice really does make perfect but in others having the best memory capacity and cognitive skills just can’t be beat.

This is of course not a popular subject outside of athletics where the inborn gifts of speed and size clearly provide advantages but it correlates with performance none the less.

Excerpts and Link:

“By age 20, the students whom the faculty nominated as the “best” players had accumulated an average of over 10,000 hours, compared with just under 8,000 hours for the “good” players and not even 5,000 hours for the least skilled.”

“Those findings have been enthusiastically championed, perhaps because of their meritocratic appeal: what seems to separate the great from the merely good is hard work, not intellectual ability.”

“But this isn’t quite the story that science tells. Research has shown that intellectual ability matters for success in many fields — and not just up to a point.”

“he remarkable finding of their study is that, compared with the participants who were “only” in the 99.1 percentile for intellectual ability at age 12, those who were in the 99.9 percentile — the profoundly gifted — were between three and five times more likely to go on to earn a doctorate, secure a patent, publish an article in a scientific journal or publish a literary work. A high level of intellectual ability gives you an enormous real-world advantage.”

“In other words, if you took two pianists with the same amount of practice, but different levels of working memory capacity, it’s likely that the one higher in working memory capacity would have performed considerably better on the sight-reading task.”

“It would be nice if intellectual ability and the capacities that underlie it were important for success only up to a point. In fact, it would be nice if they weren’t important at all, because research shows that those factors are highly stable across an individual’s life span. But wishing doesn’t make it so.”

“None of this is to deny the power of practice. Nor is it to say that it’s impossible for a person with an average I.Q. to, say, earn a Ph.D. in physics. It’s just unlikely, relatively speaking. Sometimes the story that science tells us isn’t the story we want to hear.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/opinion/sunday/sorry-strivers-talent-matters.html?src=me&ref=general

The Evansville-Vanderburgh County Traffic Safety Partnership will conduct a sobriety checkpoint this Wednesday evening, November 23, 2011 from 11 p.m. until 3 a.m. with the objective of improving the safety of the motoring public during the Thanksgiving holiday. Law enforcement officers from the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office, the Evansville Police Department and the Indiana State Police will join together to conduct this checkpoint.

The location for this Friday’s checkpoint was chosen based on local traffic collision data. Analysis of data captured during late October and early November indicated that several geographical areas within Vanderbugh County accounted for a disproportionately high number of reported hit and run crashes. Hit and run crashes are often the result of impaired drivers who try to avoid arrest by fleeing the scene.

This Wednesday’s checkpoint will be located within one of the above referenced areas in order to accomplish the goal of detecting and deterring impaired drivers (in an effort to reduce the occurance of alcohol and drug related traffic crashes).

In a special meeting on November 18, the University of Southern Indiana Board of Trustees reduced the price per credit hour of summer session courses for in-state undergraduate students by approximately 20 percent, beginning in summer 2012.

The move reduces the current $193.07 per credit hour for Indiana undergraduates to $154.50 per credit hour in summer 2012 and $162.30 per credit hour in summer 2013. For an undergraduate taking a full-time summer load of 12 credit hours, this new program will cut costs by $463 in summer 2012 and $510 in summer 2013.

“The University of Southern Indiana Board of Trustees takes very seriously the issue of affordability and access,” Board Chair Ted C. Ziemer Jr. said. “This program for summer sessions will help reduce the cost of excellent higher education for Hoosiers and is in line with USI’s history of affordability. By offering classes in the summer at a lower price, the University will make it more attractive for students to speed up their achievement of a college degree and, by increasing the number of students it serves in the summer, make better use of our resources.”

President Linda L. M. Bennett said, “The reduction of summer session costs will encourage our students to take advantage of earning credits in the summer and will help with timely degree completion, a priority for the state and for the University.”

“For students from Evansville and the southwest Indiana region home for the summer from other colleges and universities, this price reduction also will be a benefit,” Bennett added. “They can earn credits at USI that apply toward their degree completion, most likely at a much lower cost.”

USI’s 2012 summer sessions begin May 9 and June 18, with more than 560 courses scheduled. Last summer, 4,455 students were enrolled in summer courses, an increase of over nine percent or 400 students over the last five years. The University anticipates increased enrollment in summer sessions and more efficient use of state-funded facilities.

For more about summer sessions at USI, see www.usi.edu/summer.

Source: USI.edu