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First off, learning is always about behavior modification, and usually about challenging fixed beliefs. Teaching math focuses on changing student behavior when encountering numbers and symbols on a piece of paper. Phys. Ed focuses on changing student behavior when swinging at a ball. If you haven't changed their behavior, you haven't taught them anything.

As to whether the language of the plank refers to things in the generic or the specific, note that "Higher Order Thinking Skills" is capitalized and noted as an acronym. While I can't find it in Google, this at least implies that there is a very specific definition for that term. It's entirely possible that there is a known "Higher Order Thinking Skills" curriculum that is nothing of the sort. But there is certainly ambiguity there that they should have cleaned up, if they're talking about a specific program or curriculum.

When they say they oppose "critical thinking skills", they didn't say "Critical Thinking Skills", "'Critical Thinking Skills'", or "the so-called 'Critical Thinking Skills' program proposed by those Godless Democrats for the purpose of teaching free love and atheism". There is nothing in their text that implies that they mean anything but the generic sense of critical thinking skills.

The authors had plenty of opportunity to spin their words properly, if they meant anything other than actually opposing the teaching of critical thinking skills. If they couldn't be bothered to do so, neither should we.

"Atheist countries"?

Yes, like the USA.

Pledge of Allegiance: "...one nation under God..."

National motto: "In God we trust"

Both cases were added in the 1950's as a paranoiac response to "godless communism". There's a Porky Pig cartoon made during WWII where he has a nightmare about Nazism and when he wakes up he stutters his way through the Pledge of Allegiance: "...one nation, indivisible...". Ironically, the original version which lacks the phrase "under God" was penned by a minister.

Court oath: "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?"

Oath of allegiance: "...I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God"

The small number of times I've bumped into a need to make a formal statement or oath, I've notified the clerk or judge and been advised to end the phrasing with "so help me."

I'm not saying that there isn't a strong religious wind blowing in the USA. There are plenty of people who, like McCarthy in the 1950's, would love to push religion into government. But some of the biggest advocates for secular government have been intelligent religious leaders who recognize the protection that secular rather than religious-based law gives them when they're minorities.

Please change your ID from Golddess to godless. It is more becoming of your language.

You buy them up so your godless heathen competitors can't. The business you save (from falling into their clutches) today might one day be your own.

We have a saying here: if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.

Maybe the Pakistanis will start shit on China's western flank, and they'll start sending in waves upon waves of the world's most vicious and bloodthirsty terrorists to start shit, like they've done in Kashmir. Maybe China needs a few thousand more involuntary organ donors.

Totally happy for China to learn that lesson the hard way. Let's see how that 'all weather friendship works out', once the super-Muslims of Pakistan work out that the Chinese are even bigger godless kuffars than the hated white man.

So much for that vaunted ancient Chinese wisdom, huh?

No one should travel to 2nd or 3rd world godless countries. Fix your frigging country or say good bye to tourist dollars.

It is a belief there is no god. It comes from the Greek word Atheos, which means godless. Look it up in a dictionary before you claim your opinion as fact.

atheism [ey-thee-iz-uhm]
noun
1. the doctrine or belief that there is no God.
2. disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings.
Origin: 1580–90; < Greek áthe ( os ) godless + -ism

No one should travel to 2nd or 3rd world godless countries without carrying vitals in a money pouch (including New York City and Las Vegas). Just asking for trouble. Learn from his naiveté, world!

DAMN right! Killing people for profit? Fine with me, as long as it enriches my portfolio. Don't these Godless commies know that the love of money is the root of all virtue?

Yes - I'm noticing an increase in the feathers flying around! Your first two phrases are relics of the red scare in the 1950's. We wanted to show those godless communists that the big guy was on our side. So our money got the phrase "In god we trust" (I refuse to capitalize being I don't believe) and "under god" added to our pledge. It has had it's run and it is time to return America to its secular roots.

Durrr, you're quoting a saying. Your capitalizing the word god in that context would not indicate any sort of belief in "God".

...the fact that he was a godless scientist...

This is one of the problem with the USA right there. I know this document is from the cold war but the same kind of bullshit thinking is still happening in 2012.

Are you suggesting that power should be accompanied by responsibility?

Why do you hate America, you godless communist?

Well, yes, Bhuddism is a godless religion, but the Thais still fear and respect "spirits". They build ornate little houses about the size of a bird house outside their home for the spirits to live in, so they won't go inside their own homes.

>> Well, except for buddhism, that has a fat man instead.
> I spent a year in Thailand, a Bhuddist country, and learned quite a bit about their religion. Obviously you know little about Bhuddism.

I'm no expert on the various forms, no; but I do realise that pure, godless buddhism has in many places been mixed into the local god-based religion - so also in Thailand.

None of that was the point, however.

Yes - I'm noticing an increase in the feathers flying around! Your first two phrases are relics of the red scare in the 1950's. We wanted to show those godless communists that the big guy was on our side. So our money got the phrase "In god we trust" (I refuse to capitalize being I don't believe) and "under god" added to our pledge. It has had it's run and it is time to return America to its secular roots.

It is easy to see why pro-P2P goyim are opposed to someone named Ari Emanuel. He is jewish and his given name means "God is with us". Yes, indeed the jews are the only heavenly chosen race on Earth, YHWH chose them for his ally souvereignly, making them receive blessings of wisdom!

Hollywood is run by jews, Broadway is run by jews, Manhattan & Wall Street are run by jews and all of them are owned by jews. The press is jewish and the scientists are jewish. They are the creative and enterpreneuring blessed minds, the chosen tribe tasked to keep this free and progressive world running, so the masses of goyim do not have to live in fear, like medieval peasants: barefoot, struggling day by day and constantly ill.

On the other hand, modern day goyim are merrily net-pirating and depriving jews of the revenue they deserve, based on their monetary and creative investment in the publishing, movie and popular music industry, among others - pirating using computers and data networks invented by jewish scientists.

One can't grasp why the mighty Israel, possessive of all wunderwaffe, including nukes and dreaded special corps and having full reign of world politics, still tolerates goyim stealing massive loads of digital content from jews? Every dollar lost to P2P is missing from the military budget of the IDF and thus, one day the arabs will amass and extinguish the chosen people and the world will fall into darkness.

Shall YHWH not let that happen, but extinguish the vile P2P goyim with brimstone, like he crushed Sodoma and Jericho and many other godless places!

Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad!

In fairness "under God" was a relatively recent addition to the pledge - inserted as a PR move to separate us from the "godless commies".

I once posted something to the effect that life developing from evolution was like as if was guided by a Supreme Being. i.e. how we have people like ourselves existing considering what the universe was in the beginning (The Big Bang). But damn, I got my ass flamed bad, got negative mod points, all kinds of crap. Just go to shows, if it ain't one thing, it's another. You either believe in creationism (and get flamed for being a narrowminded religious nut) or believe in evolution (and get flamed for being a godless communist).

Feeding solar in like that just causes inefficiency, you still need the same level of power generation from other (coal/gas etc) sources on the grid to cope with nights and cloudy days.

Yessirree. Plus, when you use solar energy, it makes baby Jesus cry. We're supposed to get our energy from fossil fuels and fossil fuels alone. That's in the Bible.

And everyone knows we've reached the limits of technological advance. We'll never be able to get any power from the Sun.

If you want an example of how superior a great, muscular fossil fuel burning country is to a weeny little sun using country, just look at how much better the US economy is doing compared to Germany. At least we were doing better until that Marxist bastard Obama gave us socialized medicine. Now we're going to have an inferior health care system like Germany does.

And don't tell me about the Germans. They're only able to make use of solar power because of godless government subsidies, (and government subsidies really make Baby Jesus cry), and anyway Germans don't really use energy the way Americans do. They've got fruity little solar panels and fruity little cars and nothing like the mighty industrial economy of the U.S. of A. which runs on the juice we squeeze from the ground like the great manly Colossus that we are.