Six people fainted on board a British Airways flight from Newark Liberty Airport to London’s Heathrow Saturday, prompting emergency crews to check the plane for hazardous materials.

Police said nothing suspicious was found on board after the jet was searched by emergency teams in protective gear.

Ambulance personnel said the six people were treated on board the plane and allowed to continue travel. No one required hospitalization, they said.

A few weeks ago I wrote about MIT’s OpenCourseWare program.

The unfortunately named University of the People is trying to take that idea to the next level, by offering actual degrees, online, for free.

One vision for the school of the future comes from the United Nations. Founded this year by the UN’s Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technology and Development (GAID), the University of the People is a not-for-profit institution that aims to offer higher education opportunities to people who generally couldn’t afford it by leveraging social media technologies and ideas.

The school is a one hundred percent online institution, and utilizes open source courseware and peer-to-peer learning to deliver information to students without charging tuition. There are some costs, however. Students must pay an application fee (though the idea is to accept everyone who applies that has a high school diploma and speaks English), and when they’re ready, students must pay to take tests, which they are required to pass in order to continue their education. All fees are set on a sliding scale based on the student’s country of origin, and never exceed $100.

While the school isn’t accredited, yet, they plan to do so.

The Obama administration is considering something similar.

[I]n June, the administration has had high level discussions about creating courses aimed at community college attendees that would be delivered online for free. According to the report, the government is considering a $50 million per year budget to “pay for (and own) courses that would be free for all, as well as setting up a system to assess learning in those courses.”

Intriguing idea.  I’ll have to keep an eye on this and see where it goes.

This clip has it all. A world renowned physicists, a financial expert, dinosaurs, and how the White House’s jobs numbers are unable to be quantified by any method known to man.

Posting its results late this afternoon at Recovery.gov, the White House claimed 640,329 jobs have been created or saved because of the $159 billion in stimulus funds allocated as of Sept. 30.

Officials acknowledged the numbers were not exact, saying that states and localities that reported the numbers have made mistakes.

***

So let’s see. Assuming their number is right — 160 billion divided by 1 million. Does that mean the stimulus costs taxpayers $160,000 per job?

Jared Bernstein, chief economist and senior economic advisor to the vice president, called that “calculator abuse.”

He said the cost per job was actually $92,000 — but acknowledged that estimate is for the whole stimulus package as of the end of 2010.

Walmart unveiled a new product line Here

American Samoa is an unincorporated territory of the United States that is located in the South Pacific Ocean.  It is made up of a handful of islands.  In all, the total area is about the size of Washington, D.C.  There are about 57,000 people who live there.

American Samoa is separate from the nation of Samoa (aka Western Samoa or the Independent State of Samoa), which is located to the west.

The US began occupying American Samoa in 1900.  After WWII, the US Department of the Interior tried to push congress to incorporate the islands.  The plan did not pass.  In 1967 American Samoa passed their own constitution and a Samoan government was formed.  The government was modeled on the US Federal Government, and has an upper and lower house, and an executive branch led by a Governor.

People born in American Samoa are US Nationals, but not US Citizens.  As US Nationals, they cannot vote in Federal elections, but are allowed unrestricted travel in the US Mainland.  They are also authorized to work.  A US National may apply for citizenship like any other non-citizen.

Samoans elect one non-voting delegate in the House of Representatives.  They also send delegates to the Republican and Democrat national conventions.

The economy of American Samoa is limited.  There are 3 roughly equal sized sectors: the public sector, the two tuna canneries (StarKist and Samoa Packing), and all other private enterprise.

A few weeks ago, a tsunami hit American Samoa and neighboring Samoa, killing at least 150 people and wiping out several villages.

You never hear a right-wing woman break out statistics pointing out that only 25% of elected offices in Canada are held by women, and then whining about it.

No. A right-wing woman wants to get elected, she runs for office.

If she wins, great. If she loses … well, there’s always more shoe shopping.

A right-wing woman hits the gym, swings past Sobey’s and has dinner on the table by the time you get home … while her left-wing counterpart is still stuck in traffic listening to Sarah McLachlan on her iPod and feeling morally superior about her carrot choices.

And when that plate of food is put in front of you by the right-wing hottie you had the good sense to marry, it will be 100% tofu-free. If you’re lucky, she just remembered to buy steak and forgot about the carrot entirely.

Could be our slogan: Come for the culture war … stay for the chicks.

Clark was walking along 200th Avenue in the Brookswood area of Langley one afternoon in early September when he passed his assailant on the sidewalk.

“I was looking down and then I took a passing glance and saw her walk up to me,” he said.

That’s when the young woman inexplicably kicked him in the groin hard enough to send one of his testicles into his abdomen.

Clark wasn’t aware of the severity of his injury until later that night when he “noticed something was missing.”

The investigations by two separate ethics offices include an examination of the chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on defense, John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), as well as others who helped steer federal funds to clients of the PMA Group. The lawmakers received campaign contributions from the firm and its clients. A document obtained by The Washington Post shows that the subcommittee members under scrutiny also include Peter J. Visclosky (D-Ind.), James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) , C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) and Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.).

The document also indicates that the House ethics committee’s staff recently interviewed the staff of Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) about his allegation that a PMA lobbyist threatened him in 2007 when he resisted steering federal funds to a PMA client. The lobbyist told a Nunes staffer that if the lawmaker didn’t help, the defense contractor would move out of Nunes’s district and take dozens of jobs with him.