Chess blogger Mig covered most of the angles about this here:
www chessninja com/dailydirt/2011/04/chess-in-armenian-schools htm

WordPress won't let me add a link so I'll just quote the most important part:

"This page [*] is a nice summary of studies and research papers on chess in schools and its impact on development and achievement. There's the usual correlation vs causation problem in most of these studies, of course. Societies really don't like doing serious compulsory experiments on kids, for mostly obvious reasons, so it's hard to do rigorous double-blind experiments with the control groups and random selection needed to produce good science. Plus, the people guiding the experiments are often chess people with a strong desire for the results to come out with a positive spin for chess.

None of this is to say that chess can't improve reasoning or reading scores or discipline -- I believe it can -- but it's also hard to say that kids who are motivated enough to stick with a chess program aren't also motivated enough to improve in other ways relative to kids who don't stick with chess. (E.g. most kids who regularly work on music or painting also have better reading scores than kids who don't.) Patience and focus are increasingly shown to be the determining success factors in (American) school environments. Chess both teaches and rewards these characteristics. One of my favorite statistics in recent years is the one that showed the highest correlation between standardized tests at the high school level and college GPA was not the test scores themselves but how long the students took on each question. More time, better future GPA. Work matters."

[* go to original article for link]

Accident waiting to happen.

BTW, how many of you knew that the US chess championship is underway right now?

The fact alone that "exorcism" exist in the first place is absurd. And harmful.

Why don't they put it on the label?

Like Facebook? Oh wow. THAT'S GOT TO BE INTERESTING!
I mean Facebook. What else is there to say. Facebook. Just like Facebook. Can you imagine? Facebook! Wow. Facebook.

If women can have cleavage, men should be able to have... bulgeage (or something). Only seems fair.

Mark my words: this will be fashionable. Some day. In the future.

(It already was, so don't say I'm delirious.)

(Come to think of it, it's already "hip" (or whatever) for men to have their ass hanging out of their pants, so I really don't understand how those rappers (or gangsterz or whatever) have not yet gotten on to this. This may come sooner than you think. !)

"Of course the rule is B.S. anyway"

School is B.S. It's not the real world. They make up their own rules. What's to discuss even?

"Am I the only one that read the headline as "Is 19 to old for porn?"

Nope.

2 minutes with Google:

Texas mom convicted in daughter's "exorcism" death (April 13, 2011)

Suspected witches sent to prison (April 10, 2011)

Central African Republic Witchcraft

"Every year hundreds are charged with the practice for which the punishment is execution (although there are no recent reports of this punishment being carried out) however most are sent to prison with jail terms averaging about four years. In some local prisons about 50% of the prison population is taken up by those accused of witchcraft."

That look on her face makes the picture. Priceless. :D

OmgLOLwtf?!

Reminds me of utilitarianism (& check criticism).

Sounds good, but...

Hello, let's get real here. If anything in the original picture was offensive it was the skeleton.

Put the original back! ;)

What do I care whether or not some random person likes a certain album or not. There are (currently) 6.91 billion people on earth, all with different tastes.

>> Detroit, why don’t you make cars like this?

Because there's only room for one person in that car?