But haven't they know this about the appendix for like 10-20 years? There used to be a lot of 'vestigial' organs that no one knew what they did; now, not so many. This seems like old news, to me...
Good point; I like the way you think. But to tame malaria and preserve the lives of 300,000 dead Africans, you don't need to raise money, only awareness. The EU doesn't want to bring in DDT. Nevermind that the problematic part of it's history is 40 years old, the French have mosquito nets to sell, man!
(This is among the cruelest things I know of, by the way.) And notice the 'evil Americans' isn't doing it.:)
Barcodes need to be visible; it's become a well-known part of the plan.
If an RFID has to be _visible_ in order to work, doesn't that betray the POINT of an RFID? The usefulness of an RFID is that a pallet load of them leaving a dock can be identified, counted, etc by machine, and not by hand.
If we've reached a point where an RFID needs to be visible, we've wasted more than a decade and billions of dollars on an idea that's failed. Cost per unit and other issues aside, if visibility is necessary (at all) then this is a dead idea that won't soon be back. Nor should it!
Great; there's a hole now, artificially changing the semi-predictable nature of the problem. What's going to fill it? Oh, yeah....water. The same thing that fills the empty space under Houston where they've been pulling oil out for over a century.
Like the other poster mentioned, does digging a mere 5% into this famously-fragile section really reveal anything we didn't know before? Seems like they'd pick a place that _doesn't_ have 20 million people involved, if they open a hole to say, lava or something else that induces a change under there...but I'm just a layman.
It's just the line "don't tug on Superman's cape" comes to mind...
Today's public school system will only manage to waste EVEN MORE money if they try to bring in laptops and iPods and iPhones, try to manage the software releases, track bugs, and all the other things each and every company fights to do along the way: the problem is more basic, not simple, and requires being solved before technology can be applied sensibly.
The public school system is unchanged, really from it's founding purpose: to educate farm kids (who needed little to survive, milking cows and such) at the turn of the century, they needed English and math, a little money management (which used to be called Home Economics) in order for them to hold down a factory job. They had to learn how to behave and become productive in an old-style mill. Most of these people knew SO much more than their modern counterparts...
But, SURPRISE! We don't "do" factory jobs anymore, at least not like we used to. This is great for the community of man; no longer does so much of the Third World have to starve all the time, they can get jobs....thank heavens.
And since the 60's the role of the public school has become more of a babysitter, anyway. Create more consumers; don't worry if they can't read on the output-side, we need people to toil their lives away on minimum wage, too. And if the don't feel like getting away from the TV, there's always Welfare. And there, they'll vote Democrat and wait for the next check, anyway. This kind of thinking didn't work for the Romans, and isn't working here.
The specifics of education in the Constitution isn't clearly defined; there's no SAT score guide mentioned, no payscales or other details. But there was a time when the first graders shared a single, big room with the seventh graders, so that all could learn at their own pace. It cost almost nothing since there was no teacher's union to ensure that horrid teachers could keep their jobs, too. It was strength in simplicity.
My dad (1926-1983), was one of these children. He wasn't bored, he did his work, and listened in on the big kid's part of the schooling and was double-promoted.
But now as DC-city school cost $10,000+ per student, per year, and something like 20% can't read (and even more can't find America on the map with both hands) while the best performing school I know of, Gibalt School for Boys in Maine is $1,024 per student, per year, and they have laptops to the fourth grade, it's clearly not a matter of more-money-makes-better-students. The waste in the system is every bit as large as the once-touted "War on Poverty" on which we've literally spent about 10T dollars and have had more casualties than the Iraq occupation.:)
Some realities:
1. Unions don't teach kids. Unions go on strike, make more demands (and take their cut), and keep teachers from teaching. Normally, in dealing with enormous bureaucracies you need them, but here they only muddy the water. In New York teachers earn $30,000 while sitting in the school system's "penalty box" when they've been perceived as doing something wrong, or have _actually_ done something wrong, come to work at literally sit in 'detention' all day, and we still pay them, sometimes for years. That is, until the members that adjudicate the cases come in to say yes or no....and they only meet one day a month. (Why?) It's a mess. But then, we elect people who have a talent for being elected, not for actually working for a living.
2. The Department of Education similarly sucks down the millions each year, but after all these years has yet to teach either student or teacher. Why is it there, then?
3. A standard must be agreed upon. Easy: this has already been done, because while the public school is gathering steam towards "worst system ever", the private school system of colleges rages-on towards perfection. THAT is why so many non-natives are in graduate school. It sounds insane, but let's take the SAT (or other, vendor-neutral yardstick) and put it to use in the public school. Sure, a fourth grader will score
Installing Ubuntu *Dapper* had only six questions....and one of them was your NAME. One reboot; ready to go. How hard is that? Linux (or LFS) from a decade ago, maybe, but not recently.
Hey, no, really: it's filling up, 'cause we're filling it with MONEY. (Man the scams this century and last has seen....Killer Bees, the coming ice age, ozone hole, acid rain....and all this just in MY lifetime.
"Will theorize for food" reads the card of a man; a man with a Ph.D in his hand....:)
I can't wait until they realize there's a worldwide shortage of old men who can't get laid, and *I*'ll be on all the magazines.:>
Genesis talks about a 'land of giants' and other things. Young-Earthers might moan (yet again) because they're laboring under a misconception; the 6,000 year idea came from a well-meaning priest trying to make use of Numbers to learn the time between Adam and Christ, but all five of his assumptions, which he listed like a good scholar, were wrong. It's true; get over it. We have 200+ ways to date things, and they will all nearly-agree.
But while there's no monolog about the creation of every secies of every animal isn't in there, the mention of the development of plants gets a summary that matches the fossil record. It's just not important; God made the plants and animals, sure, but what has his most interest is in _people_ not pre-Adam history. (And, it would make the canon a HUGE document!)
For centuries the Bible talked about the Hittites that used to exist; only aroun 1950-1960 did they actually dig up one of their cities. And the common understanding of Babylonian leaders seemed 'wrong' until it was later learned that two leaders co-existed at the time, one on a battlefield, one at the government desk. ]
The point is, the Bible isn't one document, handed down from generation to generation; it's hundreds-of-thousands of documents, some written by disinterested parties like Roman Journalist that are used to decide if the documents found are true. There are many good reasons, for example, that the Gospel of Judas isn't in the canon. Teams of people are reasoning the existance of such documents, it's not blind faith.
But I know, a lot of folks will show up anyway, uninformed, that will yell and scream for well-meaning reasons, say a bunch of stupid things, but I'm here to clear the air; this isn't anti-Biblical. It just doesn't get much mention, for good reason. It's not a timeline published by the "Wall Street Journal" of the generations, it's a love letter from the entity that created all, hoping you'll give Him a proper chance. It's a lot more accurate than the people on the street might have you believe.
*1988 July 3rd. Persian Gulf, Iran Air Airbus A-300, U.S. Navy cruiser Vincennes shot plane down, after mistaking it for an attacking jet fighter, 290 people died
I remember this one, but only vaguely. What's really odd is that I remember more clearly one going down in ~1990/1991 or so; I still have a mental picture of the photo showed on CNN. The link that provided the paragraph above didn't mention anything similar, though it mentioned a lot of other crashes/explosions/problems/etc all over the world.
It bugs me because memories I have that are so clear are hard to get there; I must be thinking of something else. That's so _weird_. I must be wrong; accept my apology- I don't know how I came up with the idea.
There's a bird that migrates pole-to-pole; the Arctic Tern. Some folks at Ann Arbor were trying to figure out how, despite messing with the optics and (somehow) the magnetics, this bird flies over so much 'enjoyable' land with lots of food and warmth to continue on to the poles, where many of them are eaten by the animals there, and then return to the other.
They tried defeating the magnetics; it didn't help. They put contacts in the eyes of birds hatched as eggs in Ann Arbor; didn't matter. I don't know how old my information is, but magentism tied to optics was a part of the concern back then.
I've seen the chroot utility for decades; I generally thought it to be a good idea for those working in really hardened environments, though I've not used it myself, since I don't have a solid understanding of it. (Avoiding what he talks about).
But maybe this would be a good time to start using the virtualization tools that come with Linux; Xen and the like. Maybe it's time we (strategically) replace chroot with virtualization? It would seem easy to 'flush and fill' the guest machine if it ever gets hacked, and it'd seem pretty tough to 'get outside' of it, aye?
Maybe you are; I didn't say the 2M dead were in Cambodia. But I remember a silly dance around the idea that, if the bad guys go to a neighboring country, we have to stop. American military forces are always bound to such things, and my striking the antiaircraft positions was an example; a lot of guys died "always turning left" and "always attacking at the same time of day", but that was the directive passed down by the president. Very soon, they just started leaving the munitions in a field somewhere, because more often than not the target had been gone for hours.
The point is, a president, with the possible exception of Eisenhower, shouldn't be making such requests of the military, and Bush doesn't. He lets the generals lead to the goal he gives them.
And no, not making the country more polarized- I keep wondering why we were all together on 9/12, and very soon the Democrats had to go back to their ugly, 'Hate the US' standpoint. Have you heard any recent terrorist tapes? Point by point, they hit each and every Democrat talking point; it's scary. Going on about Abu-Graib and such, as if anything serious happened there, getting the troops out, and on and on. It's clear the Democrats (in very large number) and the terrorists are on the same team.
I'd really like to wake the Democrats to the idea and get them to *stop* being on the enemy team again.
That's because you're listening to the wrong crowd. This war, like any other, is wasteful. But in terms of human lives, it's the easiest war we've ever had. (though Grenada was certainly short, you almost couldn't hardly call it a war.)
You might think it's something new that we arrived on the battlefield without armor on the HumVees. It's not. Rommel, when he first encountered the Americans, after fighting dozens of other nationalities, pitied them. "They come in tanks we can kill with a single shot. But this army, when a tank is killed grabs a gun and keeps fighting. I suspect this will be a tougher opponent." (I paraphrase). This happens at the outset of *every* conflict.
The shame of it is the media. At George Soros' direction, it's been called an "Illegal War", some how forgetting that Saddam's troops were getting slaughtered at the end of it, Gali (or whoever it was) in the UN called Bush Senior and told him to stop. 'You'll anger the Arab Street", he said. Bush called Schwartzkopf and told him to ceasefire, and in a few days the whole thing was done: a ceasefire.
Then Clinton came into office, a 'don't rock the boat' presidency. In 8 years he never contacted his CIA lead for information. Clinton ignores 492 missile launches against the UN-directed aircraft while enforcing the no-fly zone. Any one of them would have allowed us to return there, but Clinton didn't want to get his hands (I mean legacy) dirty. So for about 12 years total, Saddam had the chance to re-arm and break all the rules possible. You'll remember the endless stories about how the UN inspectors went in the front door, and missiles and equipment went out the back door, as seen from a recon plane. It was just game playing.
So, in a move that was as sophisticated as our entry into World War Two when we attacked a friendly nation (Norway, IIRC) after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, so that it couldn't be attacked by the Nazi's for use as a submarine base, when the towers came down, Saddam was the first stop.
You may be asking why, it's no surprise; Bush has just as horrible communications skills as Soros has good ones. Attacking and ending Saddam does for the middle east what CheckPoint Charlie did for East and West Berlin; makes the world aware just how horrible one side was.
Among the Arab "brothers" there are a few democratic, happy, touristy countries like Monaco and Egypt. But to the core of the Arabs, they're far, far away, and constantly hear what troubles they're having because they're not the 'perfect' muslisms like in Saudi. These countries barely exist, and Al-Jazzeera is their only source of information.
So what happens when, a previously screwed up country like Iraq, freed from the bondage of a tyrant, but still desperately Muslim, gets the chance to set it's *own* path? What happens when no one has to have their hands cut off, but instead spends jail time for stealing? And what happens when they're sucessful and happy, right next door to the 'perfect' muslims?
Right. Revolution and freedom. And Al-Jazzeera can't mask it anymore.
George Bush should explain this, but for some reason he doesn't. He's waiting for history to do that for him. This is the goal, to truly offer peace in the middle east. And there's nothing ridiculous about that. And in the meantime it's a great 'magnet' for rounding up all the ready-to-die terrorist to limit their numbers.
Interesting how the emmanint domain slipped past you; it's been a year or two now. But not to fear; I'm not posturing.
Row v. Wade, even by the people who took part in the fight (That'd be Mr/Ms Roe and Mr/Mrs Wade.:) have both said it was a crappy decision. There's no mention of offspring, nor killing it, in the document. It's not so much that I think abortion is death (what else is it) but that some men in black robes decided the issue, all by themselves. They're NOT to make law, that's the legislative branch. But there, they did. Same with Eminent Domain and the shackling of free speech.
They're only supposed to say "yes" or "no", not "This is how it's going to be...". The purity of the process, and the INjustice runs rampant. It's nuts. Speaking of which, we've had a couple of MenInBlack that actually were. (See "Men in Black", I think it was Mark Levin for the details.)
Oh- and Chaves and the President of Iran are working to cut off oil. That's a big deal; keep watching it. It's the same thing Saddam did. With these two cutting off oil (and potentially attacking neighbors) anyone not LIVING on a farm could get reall hungry, real quick. It's how we stopped the charge of Hitler's Panzers, ya know...oil is life now, sad to say.
There's just so much broken with us right now. So many voices shouting absurd things, things that even contradict *themselves*. Like, urgently mistrusting the government, but submitting to universal healthcare run by it. No! They really, really don't want that. They complain that the Republicans are controlling their lives, "get out of my bedroom!" and all that. But soon the Democrats are going to literally decide wheter you live or die. Wanna wait 7 weeks to mend a broken arm? It's that way in Canada. My point is: why would someone want this, when they don't trust the government?
And the last of the racial bigots are scrambling; I thought the bigotted white folks would be the last to evolve, but Sharpton and Jesse are doing *nothing* to care for the black man. In fact, I've heard kinder words to that segment of the population coming from the Right for decades. Yet who's called the racist? O'Reilly, Limbaugh, and the rest. Anyone who actually listens knows the truth.
And everyone is so afraid of lawyers that 'the right thing' isn't getting done. Administrators give up and declare "zero tolerance" (which means zero wisdom) and kids putting Army Men on their hats to celebrate a military thing last week were told the men had guns, and that's the same as the kids having REAL guns, and it would have to be stopped. Nuts!
I long for the days of two parties with two methods of solving problems. People could argue, but there wasn't the name-calling and the media tie-ins to continue slinging the mud. And now that the Left has bought the Democrats, I don't expect any sanity from that side, until they lose big. But maybe this'll be the year.:)
Nice chat, dude; clean, honest, and fair; sorry if I rambled; just got home from work.
The American Indians, yeah...that was sad. But it's wrong to think it was the one and only time one civilization conquered another and wiped them out. In fact, the only place I've seen it *not* happen when two civilizations of wide technology _merge_ is in Vietnam. Vietnam had an aboriginal people, too. And when counselors and barons or maybe even "court jesters" ticked off the Chinese court and were set to die, they ran...to Vietnam. There, a nice mix happened: people with a lot of knowledge (irrigation, strategic farming, and whatnot) met a simple people that, for some reason, never started a fight. They needed each other, and the two blended beautifully.
We can't say that for the dozens of tribes of Russia, for example. If you know of one, let me know; it's a really cool thing.
But aside from us *buying* the territory from Mexico, and having to fight them to keep it, the Mexicans have no reason to complain. Their generals were so incompetent (because they were fighting each other at the time) that the lost it, fair and square. After we bought it.
Remember that Spain invaded the Mayan and Aztech people in making Mexico; not the Americans.
France, the Louisana Purchase. Purchase.
Spain had a tussle with us in a small way around 1800; I have a great-grandfather Louis Charles Farhlander fought in it. It was our first time to be considered anything like a superpower.
The British lost us, just like they lost 1/4 of the world, while THEY were doing the conquering. Hong Kong, India, Greece and Turkey (it's because the Brits never settled the disputes in Kasmir and Cypress that they still rage today). "The War of The Worlds" was a book written during this time. Like Moby Dick and...one other book whose name escapes me...it was two books in one. It was illegal and dangerous to complain about the aliens (Brits) taking over the planet, until killed by the tse-tse fly or whatnot, so it was written about *real* aliens.
I'm not sure how the Canadians come into this; if we fought them for Canada, I think we lost. The Louisiana Purchase gave us the northern border across the plains. In fact, I don't *ever* recall fighting the Candaians, though the French, while *they* were conquering, founded a great deal of it.
Hawaii was a small-time set of islands run by a woman at the time of it's Annex. As far as I know it was just a slimy land-deal to have a strategic 'lookout' on the far west side. China was still oriented towards conquring, because *they* conquered a good part of the world a few times, including the island chains of the Philippines. Japanese took them, when *they* were conquering, and the last I heard we gave them all back to them, including making some a protectorate, so they have welfare checks and such, as well as the implicit backing of the military should anyone try to conquer them again.
Meanwhile, the great-granddaughter of the woman running Hawaii was on TV a couple of years ago, and reported that this was what granny always wanted: tourism, clean water, power, and a happy, healthy country; she wouldn't have been annoyed at all.
Funny story: the Hawaiians brought US cowboys. Spain dropped off some of the King's Herd as a present one time. Then, killing them was certain death. Until they got so large, they became hazardous to people and crops. They called for some Spanish cowboys to round them up, and once the herd was so large, to kill some. These people came to America and showed us how, a long, long time ago. Isn't that interesting?
So, yeah. I know a little American History. China, Phonetia, France, Spain, Britain, and a double-armload of Russian tribes on horseback were once mighty conquerers of land. I have YET to see a 51st state.
Your wording is precise; your intent is not. (And your charm is somewhat missing, btw).
Nixon was the one to get us out, and everyone from Ike to Kennedy were part of the crew getting us in there. Check your books.
I remember at the time thinking, "If the VC could just drop back into Cambodia and return, why not bomb Cambodia?" I still think the way they micromanaged the war was absurd. And as bad as it was, people shooting themselves in the foot to go home, and all the craziness, one of the men in the crosshairs of the craziness was John Murtha. Now, he's the guy trying to do what he hated most about that war: run it from Congress.
And check me on Tet; my source is the History Channel.
Excuse me. I "awoke" in 1963 when I was born. I saw all of this on television decades before most of you were born.
You're clearly forgetting that the 2,000,000 dead bodies, shown as stacks of pyramids of human skulls and sheds stacked with femurs and such wasn't done by America: it was done by the Democratic Party that *demanded* we leave there, creating a power vacuum, and enabling Pohl POt to ravage hundreds of square miles. You don't remember the last person hanging onto the skids of the helicopters for dear life, I do.
There was a lot wrong with the Vietnam war. But notice: no 51st state. We've given them MONEY since then, it's now a tourist trap. We weren't there to wipe out the people, we were there to secure the peace and keep the flow of natural rubber at market prices.
Dumb ideas like *always* flying to the antiaircraft guns, dropping a bomb and *always* turning away in the same direction, so that many, many fliers would get shot down, that too, was a Democrat's idea: he was micro-managing the war.
And it didn't help that the young and nubile Jane Fonda was over there as part of the propaganda movement, sitting on an antiaircraft gun that the day before was firing at our troops. The left has been anti-American a long time. They still run thousands of newspapers and all three broadcast facilities. It's the biggest mind-control this Earth has ever seen.
Don't think so? How about universal healthcare? Don't you 'hate' the government? Don't you despise the waste and the invasion of privacy now? WHY ON EARTH would anyone think that giving the exact same government full control over our very lives would be a good idea?...because it's "Free" healthcare. The most expensive kind. You pay with lives.
[And now back to your regularly scheduled programming...]
Yeah, Vietnam was another of those hoaky wars. I just learned the other day that the Tet Offensive wasn't a defeat...but rather a very, very bloody win, but Chronkite didn't see it that way, so we were all told it was a disaster.
I know a guy that was there, during Tet; there was nothing 'nice' about that war. Brutal, ends-meet-needs kind of fighting and the VietCong were harsh, too!:> (Talking about Johnson's investment in the war industry.)
Maybe they can shine that same light on all the *other* wrong legislation, too?
Wait; has there been two? The one I saw, with my own eyes was on during the time we weren't fighting him. It was done in such a time that the main news outfits could broadcast it in the western hemisphere. I remember at the time thinking....why are these bodies floating? And "Why are they all naked and stiff?" It was a splendid charade; he was known for such parlor tricks...
But Iran did one, too? (Cause this was day-time, and I remember the tie-in; Iran was very quiet for a long time, after the hostages came back. Now, because they made the president of a superpower (Jimmy Carter) beg for the hostages back, Hammas enjoys millions of dollars and supporters. Thanks, Jimmy. [Nice guy, HORRIBLE president.]
Right...but I'm not talking about the Conservatives being the bad guy (although that seems to be the default anymore, doesn't it? Thanks, George.)
I'm saying that it in fact, did happen. I know it's not part of the Constitution, but it happened and no one seemed to lift an eyebrow.
Understand that Republicans aren't very good at being Conservatives...I'm as unhappy with them as the nutroots are with Hillary. My suggestion is both 20 year term limits to *any* elected position (so it's no longer a career-to-the-death) and to institute removal of useless parts of the government. See also: Department of Education. Know how many people they educate? None. No how useful they are? Not. Yet, we pay all the time, and they complain that there are "cuts" if on a given year they get a 6% increase, not a 9% increase.
Many, many weird things are afoot; if your awareness level extends only to CNN, you're gonna miss it. I'm not talking about conspiracy theory...actual statments from Hugo Chavez and Iran's President talking about "How nice it would be to destroy America" while the college kids keep voting Democratic so they can get "free" healthcare.
And if we make it another decade without a world war, I'll be shocked. Important things are being ignored, frivolous things (like Paris Hilton, etal) are on the forefront. It's just a crazy, crazy time.
Who was it that did the "Art of War"? Tsin-shu? Whoever: the best way to win a war is for your enemy not to KNOW you're at war.
It's not like a good old-fashioned war. There's not an Al-qaida insignia on their fighter planes so you can tell the good guys from bad. And who would believe that these people, most living in squalid conditions would have the might to do anything of the kind?
It's because they live in that poverty and unhappiness they've become programmed to kill. They're moving into London in huge numbers. The local 'bobbies' will steer clear of their areas, where sharia law prevails. At some point, all they need to do is vote, and it'll be called Londonistan. (See the book of the same name.)
We weren't at war when they attacked the Cole. We weren't at war when they through the Klinghoff out of his wheelchair during the hijacking of that cruise ship. We weren't at war when they killed a couple hundred Marines in Lebanon. Similarly we weren't at war when Saddam filled an airliner with bodies from the morgue and bid it fly into a cruiser...so we shot it down. (Yet, not at war; Saddam was a slick operator. He didn't NEED the six month's notice we were coming for "weapons of mass destruction" for him to ferry it to Syria.)
So they take the towers down. 3,000-or-so Americans died...about twice Pearl Harbor. We're still not "at war"?
The Lacawana 6? The Fort Bliss Cell? The British Bombings? Nope, still not at war, though large numbers of people are dying for no good reason at all. Like Bali.
Let's be clear: we're at war. You're at StarBucks, but we're at war.
No, really, look up "Liberty House" where the Conservatives are trying to take away a Supreme Court Judge's home to install a museum complaining about the act. What, they didn't mention this on CNN?
(And no, never heard of the rock band.)
(See why I complain? Time for term limits.)
Slashdot Mirror
But haven't they know this about the appendix for like 10-20 years? There used to be a lot of 'vestigial' organs that no one knew what they did; now, not so many. This seems like old news, to me...
death by litigation. It's glorious, isn't it?
:)
Take down the seaside-view with the little palm tree. Put up the big "N" and we'll call it even.
Good point; I like the way you think. But to tame malaria and preserve the lives of 300,000 dead Africans, you don't need to raise money, only awareness. The EU doesn't want to bring in DDT. Nevermind that the problematic part of it's history is 40 years old, the French have mosquito nets to sell, man!
:)
(This is among the cruelest things I know of, by the way.) And notice the 'evil Americans' isn't doing it.
Barcodes need to be visible; it's become a well-known part of the plan.
If an RFID has to be _visible_ in order to work, doesn't that betray the POINT of an RFID? The usefulness of an RFID is that a pallet load of them leaving a dock can be identified, counted, etc by machine, and not by hand.
If we've reached a point where an RFID needs to be visible, we've wasted more than a decade and billions of dollars on an idea that's failed. Cost per unit and other issues aside, if visibility is necessary (at all) then this is a dead idea that won't soon be back. Nor should it!
Great; there's a hole now, artificially changing the semi-predictable nature of the problem. What's going to fill it? Oh, yeah....water. The same thing that fills the empty space under Houston where they've been pulling oil out for over a century.
Like the other poster mentioned, does digging a mere 5% into this famously-fragile section really reveal anything we didn't know before? Seems like they'd pick a place that _doesn't_ have 20 million people involved, if they open a hole to say, lava or something else that induces a change under there...but I'm just a layman.
It's just the line "don't tug on Superman's cape" comes to mind...
Today's public school system will only manage to waste EVEN MORE money if they try to bring in laptops and iPods and iPhones, try to manage the software releases, track bugs, and all the other things each and every company fights to do along the way: the problem is more basic, not simple, and requires being solved before technology can be applied sensibly.
:)
The public school system is unchanged, really from it's founding purpose: to educate farm kids (who needed little to survive, milking cows and such) at the turn of the century, they needed English and math, a little money management (which used to be called Home Economics) in order for them to hold down a factory job. They had to learn how to behave and become productive in an old-style mill. Most of these people knew SO much more than their modern counterparts...
But, SURPRISE! We don't "do" factory jobs anymore, at least not like we used to. This is great for the community of man; no longer does so much of the Third World have to starve all the time, they can get jobs....thank heavens.
And since the 60's the role of the public school has become more of a babysitter, anyway. Create more consumers; don't worry if they can't read on the output-side, we need people to toil their lives away on minimum wage, too. And if the don't feel like getting away from the TV, there's always Welfare. And there, they'll vote Democrat and wait for the next check, anyway. This kind of thinking didn't work for the Romans, and isn't working here.
The specifics of education in the Constitution isn't clearly defined; there's no SAT score guide mentioned, no payscales or other details. But there was a time when the first graders shared a single, big room with the seventh graders, so that all could learn at their own pace. It cost almost nothing since there was no teacher's union to ensure that horrid teachers could keep their jobs, too. It was strength in simplicity.
My dad (1926-1983), was one of these children. He wasn't bored, he did his work, and listened in on the big kid's part of the schooling and was double-promoted.
But now as DC-city school cost $10,000+ per student, per year, and something like 20% can't read (and even more can't find America on the map with both hands) while the best performing school I know of, Gibalt School for Boys in Maine is $1,024 per student, per year, and they have laptops to the fourth grade, it's clearly not a matter of more-money-makes-better-students. The waste in the system is every bit as large as the once-touted "War on Poverty" on which we've literally spent about 10T dollars and have had more casualties than the Iraq occupation.
Some realities:
1. Unions don't teach kids. Unions go on strike, make more demands (and take their cut), and keep teachers from teaching. Normally, in dealing with enormous bureaucracies you need them, but here they only muddy the water. In New York teachers earn $30,000 while sitting in the school system's "penalty box" when they've been perceived as doing something wrong, or have _actually_ done something wrong, come to work at literally sit in 'detention' all day, and we still pay them, sometimes for years. That is, until the members that adjudicate the cases come in to say yes or no....and they only meet one day a month. (Why?) It's a mess. But then, we elect people who have a talent for being elected, not for actually working for a living.
2. The Department of Education similarly sucks down the millions each year, but after all these years has yet to teach either student or teacher. Why is it there, then?
3. A standard must be agreed upon. Easy: this has already been done, because while the public school is gathering steam towards "worst system ever", the private school system of colleges rages-on towards perfection. THAT is why so many non-natives are in graduate school. It sounds insane, but let's take the SAT (or other, vendor-neutral yardstick) and put it to use in the public school. Sure, a fourth grader will score
Installing Ubuntu *Dapper* had only six questions....and one of them was your NAME. One reboot; ready to go. How hard is that? Linux (or LFS) from a decade ago, maybe, but not recently.
Hey, no, really: it's filling up, 'cause we're filling it with MONEY. (Man the scams this century and last has seen....Killer Bees, the coming ice age, ozone hole, acid rain....and all this just in MY lifetime.
:)
:>
"Will theorize for food" reads the card of a man; a man with a Ph.D in his hand....
I can't wait until they realize there's a worldwide shortage of old men who can't get laid, and *I*'ll be on all the magazines.
This would be the _micro_ evolution. Happens all the time; there's no bugaboo about that, and no dispute.
:)
But the last time someone took Darwin seriously, Panzers rolled across Europe in an effort that killed 150,000,000 people.
So yeah: micro, not macro evolution.
No problem!
Genesis talks about a 'land of giants' and other things. Young-Earthers might moan (yet again) because they're laboring under a misconception; the 6,000 year idea came from a well-meaning priest trying to make use of Numbers to learn the time between Adam and Christ, but all five of his assumptions, which he listed like a good scholar, were wrong. It's true; get over it. We have 200+ ways to date things, and they will all nearly-agree.
But while there's no monolog about the creation of every secies of every animal isn't in there, the mention of the development of plants gets a summary that matches the fossil record. It's just not important; God made the plants and animals, sure, but what has his most interest is in _people_ not pre-Adam history. (And, it would make the canon a HUGE document!)
For centuries the Bible talked about the Hittites that used to exist; only aroun 1950-1960 did they actually dig up one of their cities. And the common understanding of Babylonian leaders seemed 'wrong' until it was later learned that two leaders co-existed at the time, one on a battlefield, one at the government desk.
]
The point is, the Bible isn't one document, handed down from generation to generation; it's hundreds-of-thousands of documents, some written by disinterested parties like Roman Journalist that are used to decide if the documents found are true. There are many good reasons, for example, that the Gospel of Judas isn't in the canon. Teams of people are reasoning the existance of such documents, it's not blind faith.
But I know, a lot of folks will show up anyway, uninformed, that will yell and scream for well-meaning reasons, say a bunch of stupid things, but I'm here to clear the air; this isn't anti-Biblical. It just doesn't get much mention, for good reason. It's not a timeline published by the "Wall Street Journal" of the generations, it's a love letter from the entity that created all, hoping you'll give Him a proper chance. It's a lot more accurate than the people on the street might have you believe.
...and you really want to give these people control over your healthcare? :>
Indeed!
Yeah, ok: here's the one you're talking about:
*1988 July 3rd. Persian Gulf, Iran Air Airbus A-300, U.S. Navy cruiser Vincennes shot plane down, after mistaking it for an attacking jet fighter, 290 people died
I remember this one, but only vaguely. What's really odd is that I remember more clearly one going down in ~1990/1991 or so; I still have a mental picture of the photo showed on CNN. The link that provided the paragraph above didn't mention anything similar, though it mentioned a lot of other crashes/explosions/problems/etc all over the world.
It bugs me because memories I have that are so clear are hard to get there; I must be thinking of something else. That's so _weird_. I must be wrong; accept my apology- I don't know how I came up with the idea.
There's a bird that migrates pole-to-pole; the Arctic Tern. Some folks at Ann Arbor were trying to figure out how, despite messing with the optics and (somehow) the magnetics, this bird flies over so much 'enjoyable' land with lots of food and warmth to continue on to the poles, where many of them are eaten by the animals there, and then return to the other.
They tried defeating the magnetics; it didn't help. They put contacts in the eyes of birds hatched as eggs in Ann Arbor; didn't matter. I don't know how old my information is, but magentism tied to optics was a part of the concern back then.
I've seen the chroot utility for decades; I generally thought it to be a good idea for those working in really hardened environments, though I've not used it myself, since I don't have a solid understanding of it. (Avoiding what he talks about).
But maybe this would be a good time to start using the virtualization tools that come with Linux; Xen and the like. Maybe it's time we (strategically) replace chroot with virtualization? It would seem easy to 'flush and fill' the guest machine if it ever gets hacked, and it'd seem pretty tough to 'get outside' of it, aye?
Maybe you are; I didn't say the 2M dead were in Cambodia. But I remember a silly dance around the idea that, if the bad guys go to a neighboring country, we have to stop. American military forces are always bound to such things, and my striking the antiaircraft positions was an example; a lot of guys died "always turning left" and "always attacking at the same time of day", but that was the directive passed down by the president. Very soon, they just started leaving the munitions in a field somewhere, because more often than not the target had been gone for hours.
The point is, a president, with the possible exception of Eisenhower, shouldn't be making such requests of the military, and Bush doesn't. He lets the generals lead to the goal he gives them.
And no, not making the country more polarized- I keep wondering why we were all together on 9/12, and very soon the Democrats had to go back to their ugly, 'Hate the US' standpoint. Have you heard any recent terrorist tapes? Point by point, they hit each and every Democrat talking point; it's scary. Going on about Abu-Graib and such, as if anything serious happened there, getting the troops out, and on and on. It's clear the Democrats (in very large number) and the terrorists are on the same team.
I'd really like to wake the Democrats to the idea and get them to *stop* being on the enemy team again.
That's because you're listening to the wrong crowd. This war, like any other, is wasteful. But in terms of human lives, it's the easiest war we've ever had. (though Grenada was certainly short, you almost couldn't hardly call it a war.)
You might think it's something new that we arrived on the battlefield without armor on the HumVees. It's not. Rommel, when he first encountered the Americans, after fighting dozens of other nationalities, pitied them. "They come in tanks we can kill with a single shot. But this army, when a tank is killed grabs a gun and keeps fighting. I suspect this will be a tougher opponent." (I paraphrase). This happens at the outset of *every* conflict.
The shame of it is the media. At George Soros' direction, it's been called an "Illegal War", some how forgetting that Saddam's troops were getting slaughtered at the end of it, Gali (or whoever it was) in the UN called Bush Senior and told him to stop. 'You'll anger the Arab Street", he said. Bush called Schwartzkopf and told him to ceasefire, and in a few days the whole thing was done: a ceasefire.
Then Clinton came into office, a 'don't rock the boat' presidency. In 8 years he never contacted his CIA lead for information. Clinton ignores 492 missile launches against the UN-directed aircraft while enforcing the no-fly zone. Any one of them would have allowed us to return there, but Clinton didn't want to get his hands (I mean legacy) dirty. So for about 12 years total, Saddam had the chance to re-arm and break all the rules possible. You'll remember the endless stories about how the UN inspectors went in the front door, and missiles and equipment went out the back door, as seen from a recon plane. It was just game playing.
So, in a move that was as sophisticated as our entry into World War Two when we attacked a friendly nation (Norway, IIRC) after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, so that it couldn't be attacked by the Nazi's for use as a submarine base, when the towers came down, Saddam was the first stop.
You may be asking why, it's no surprise; Bush has just as horrible communications skills as Soros has good ones. Attacking and ending Saddam does for the middle east what CheckPoint Charlie did for East and West Berlin; makes the world aware just how horrible one side was.
Among the Arab "brothers" there are a few democratic, happy, touristy countries like Monaco and Egypt. But to the core of the Arabs, they're far, far away, and constantly hear what troubles they're having because they're not the 'perfect' muslisms like in Saudi. These countries barely exist, and Al-Jazzeera is their only source of information.
So what happens when, a previously screwed up country like Iraq, freed from the bondage of a tyrant, but still desperately Muslim, gets the chance to set it's *own* path? What happens when no one has to have their hands cut off, but instead spends jail time for stealing? And what happens when they're sucessful and happy, right next door to the 'perfect' muslims?
Right. Revolution and freedom. And Al-Jazzeera can't mask it anymore.
George Bush should explain this, but for some reason he doesn't. He's waiting for history to do that for him. This is the goal, to truly offer peace in the middle east. And there's nothing ridiculous about that. And in the meantime it's a great 'magnet' for rounding up all the ready-to-die terrorist to limit their numbers.
Interesting how the emmanint domain slipped past you; it's been a year or two now. But not to fear; I'm not posturing.
:)
Row v. Wade, even by the people who took part in the fight (That'd be Mr/Ms Roe and Mr/Mrs Wade.:) have both said it was a crappy decision. There's no mention of offspring, nor killing it, in the document. It's not so much that I think abortion is death (what else is it) but that some men in black robes decided the issue, all by themselves. They're NOT to make law, that's the legislative branch. But there, they did. Same with Eminent Domain and the shackling of free speech.
They're only supposed to say "yes" or "no", not "This is how it's going to be...". The purity of the process, and the INjustice runs rampant. It's nuts. Speaking of which, we've had a couple of MenInBlack that actually were. (See "Men in Black", I think it was Mark Levin for the details.)
Oh- and Chaves and the President of Iran are working to cut off oil. That's a big deal; keep watching it. It's the same thing Saddam did. With these two cutting off oil (and potentially attacking neighbors) anyone not LIVING on a farm could get reall hungry, real quick. It's how we stopped the charge of Hitler's Panzers, ya know...oil is life now, sad to say.
There's just so much broken with us right now. So many voices shouting absurd things, things that even contradict *themselves*. Like, urgently mistrusting the government, but submitting to universal healthcare run by it. No! They really, really don't want that. They complain that the Republicans are controlling their lives, "get out of my bedroom!" and all that. But soon the Democrats are going to literally decide wheter you live or die. Wanna wait 7 weeks to mend a broken arm? It's that way in Canada. My point is: why would someone want this, when they don't trust the government?
And the last of the racial bigots are scrambling; I thought the bigotted white folks would be the last to evolve, but Sharpton and Jesse are doing *nothing* to care for the black man. In fact, I've heard kinder words to that segment of the population coming from the Right for decades. Yet who's called the racist? O'Reilly, Limbaugh, and the rest. Anyone who actually listens knows the truth.
And everyone is so afraid of lawyers that 'the right thing' isn't getting done. Administrators give up and declare "zero tolerance" (which means zero wisdom) and kids putting Army Men on their hats to celebrate a military thing last week were told the men had guns, and that's the same as the kids having REAL guns, and it would have to be stopped. Nuts!
I long for the days of two parties with two methods of solving problems. People could argue, but there wasn't the name-calling and the media tie-ins to continue slinging the mud. And now that the Left has bought the Democrats, I don't expect any sanity from that side, until they lose big. But maybe this'll be the year.
Nice chat, dude; clean, honest, and fair; sorry if I rambled; just got home from work.
The American Indians, yeah...that was sad. But it's wrong to think it was the one and only time one civilization conquered another and wiped them out. In fact, the only place I've seen it *not* happen when two civilizations of wide technology _merge_ is in Vietnam. Vietnam had an aboriginal people, too. And when counselors and barons or maybe even "court jesters" ticked off the Chinese court and were set to die, they ran...to Vietnam. There, a nice mix happened: people with a lot of knowledge (irrigation, strategic farming, and whatnot) met a simple people that, for some reason, never started a fight. They needed each other, and the two blended beautifully.
We can't say that for the dozens of tribes of Russia, for example. If you know of one, let me know; it's a really cool thing.
But aside from us *buying* the territory from Mexico, and having to fight them to keep it, the Mexicans have no reason to complain. Their generals were so incompetent (because they were fighting each other at the time) that the lost it, fair and square. After we bought it.
Remember that Spain invaded the Mayan and Aztech people in making Mexico; not the Americans.
France, the Louisana Purchase. Purchase.
Spain had a tussle with us in a small way around 1800; I have a great-grandfather Louis Charles Farhlander fought in it. It was our first time to be considered anything like a superpower.
The British lost us, just like they lost 1/4 of the world, while THEY were doing the conquering. Hong Kong, India, Greece and Turkey (it's because the Brits never settled the disputes in Kasmir and Cypress that they still rage today). "The War of The Worlds" was a book written during this time. Like Moby Dick and...one other book whose name escapes me...it was two books in one. It was illegal and dangerous to complain about the aliens (Brits) taking over the planet, until killed by the tse-tse fly or whatnot, so it was written about *real* aliens.
I'm not sure how the Canadians come into this; if we fought them for Canada, I think we lost. The Louisiana Purchase gave us the northern border across the plains. In fact, I don't *ever* recall fighting the Candaians, though the French, while *they* were conquering, founded a great deal of it.
Hawaii was a small-time set of islands run by a woman at the time of it's Annex. As far as I know it was just a slimy land-deal to have a strategic 'lookout' on the far west side. China was still oriented towards conquring, because *they* conquered a good part of the world a few times, including the island chains of the Philippines. Japanese took them, when *they* were conquering, and the last I heard we gave them all back to them, including making some a protectorate, so they have welfare checks and such, as well as the implicit backing of the military should anyone try to conquer them again.
Meanwhile, the great-granddaughter of the woman running Hawaii was on TV a couple of years ago, and reported that this was what granny always wanted: tourism, clean water, power, and a happy, healthy country; she wouldn't have been annoyed at all.
Funny story: the Hawaiians brought US cowboys. Spain dropped off some of the King's Herd as a present one time. Then, killing them was certain death. Until they got so large, they became hazardous to people and crops. They called for some Spanish cowboys to round them up, and once the herd was so large, to kill some. These people came to America and showed us how, a long, long time ago. Isn't that interesting?
So, yeah. I know a little American History. China, Phonetia, France, Spain, Britain, and a double-armload of Russian tribes on horseback were once mighty conquerers of land. I have YET to see a 51st state.
Your wording is precise; your intent is not. (And your charm is somewhat missing, btw).
Nixon was the one to get us out, and everyone from Ike to Kennedy were part of the crew getting us in there. Check your books.
I remember at the time thinking, "If the VC could just drop back into Cambodia and return, why not bomb Cambodia?" I still think the way they micromanaged the war was absurd. And as bad as it was, people shooting themselves in the foot to go home, and all the craziness, one of the men in the crosshairs of the craziness was John Murtha. Now, he's the guy trying to do what he hated most about that war: run it from Congress.
And check me on Tet; my source is the History Channel.
Excuse me. I "awoke" in 1963 when I was born. I saw all of this on television decades before most of you were born.
...because it's "Free" healthcare. The most expensive kind. You pay with lives.
You're clearly forgetting that the 2,000,000 dead bodies, shown as stacks of pyramids of human skulls and sheds stacked with femurs and such wasn't done by America: it was done by the Democratic Party that *demanded* we leave there, creating a power vacuum, and enabling Pohl POt to ravage hundreds of square miles. You don't remember the last person hanging onto the skids of the helicopters for dear life, I do.
There was a lot wrong with the Vietnam war. But notice: no 51st state. We've given them MONEY since then, it's now a tourist trap. We weren't there to wipe out the people, we were there to secure the peace and keep the flow of natural rubber at market prices.
Dumb ideas like *always* flying to the antiaircraft guns, dropping a bomb and *always* turning away in the same direction, so that many, many fliers would get shot down, that too, was a Democrat's idea: he was micro-managing the war.
And it didn't help that the young and nubile Jane Fonda was over there as part of the propaganda movement, sitting on an antiaircraft gun that the day before was firing at our troops. The left has been anti-American a long time. They still run thousands of newspapers and all three broadcast facilities. It's the biggest mind-control this Earth has ever seen.
Don't think so? How about universal healthcare? Don't you 'hate' the government? Don't you despise the waste and the invasion of privacy now? WHY ON EARTH would anyone think that giving the exact same government full control over our very lives would be a good idea?
[And now back to your regularly scheduled programming...]
Yeah, Vietnam was another of those hoaky wars. I just learned the other day that the Tet Offensive wasn't a defeat...but rather a very, very bloody win, but Chronkite didn't see it that way, so we were all told it was a disaster.
:> (Talking about Johnson's investment in the war industry.)
I know a guy that was there, during Tet; there was nothing 'nice' about that war. Brutal, ends-meet-needs kind of fighting and the VietCong were harsh, too!
Maybe they can shine that same light on all the *other* wrong legislation, too?
Wait; has there been two? The one I saw, with my own eyes was on during the time we weren't fighting him. It was done in such a time that the main news outfits could broadcast it in the western hemisphere. I remember at the time thinking....why are these bodies floating? And "Why are they all naked and stiff?" It was a splendid charade; he was known for such parlor tricks...
But Iran did one, too? (Cause this was day-time, and I remember the tie-in; Iran was very quiet for a long time, after the hostages came back. Now, because they made the president of a superpower (Jimmy Carter) beg for the hostages back, Hammas enjoys millions of dollars and supporters. Thanks, Jimmy. [Nice guy, HORRIBLE president.]
Right...but I'm not talking about the Conservatives being the bad guy (although that seems to be the default anymore, doesn't it? Thanks, George.)
I'm saying that it in fact, did happen. I know it's not part of the Constitution, but it happened and no one seemed to lift an eyebrow.
Understand that Republicans aren't very good at being Conservatives...I'm as unhappy with them as the nutroots are with Hillary. My suggestion is both 20 year term limits to *any* elected position (so it's no longer a career-to-the-death) and to institute removal of useless parts of the government. See also: Department of Education. Know how many people they educate? None. No how useful they are? Not. Yet, we pay all the time, and they complain that there are "cuts" if on a given year they get a 6% increase, not a 9% increase.
Many, many weird things are afoot; if your awareness level extends only to CNN, you're gonna miss it. I'm not talking about conspiracy theory...actual statments from Hugo Chavez and Iran's President talking about "How nice it would be to destroy America" while the college kids keep voting Democratic so they can get "free" healthcare.
And if we make it another decade without a world war, I'll be shocked. Important things are being ignored, frivolous things (like Paris Hilton, etal) are on the forefront. It's just a crazy, crazy time.
Who was it that did the "Art of War"? Tsin-shu? Whoever: the best way to win a war is for your enemy not to KNOW you're at war.
It's not like a good old-fashioned war. There's not an Al-qaida insignia on their fighter planes so you can tell the good guys from bad. And who would believe that these people, most living in squalid conditions would have the might to do anything of the kind?
It's because they live in that poverty and unhappiness they've become programmed to kill. They're moving into London in huge numbers. The local 'bobbies' will steer clear of their areas, where sharia law prevails. At some point, all they need to do is vote, and it'll be called Londonistan. (See the book of the same name.)
We weren't at war when they attacked the Cole. We weren't at war when they through the Klinghoff out of his wheelchair during the hijacking of that cruise ship. We weren't at war when they killed a couple hundred Marines in Lebanon. Similarly we weren't at war when Saddam filled an airliner with bodies from the morgue and bid it fly into a cruiser...so we shot it down. (Yet, not at war; Saddam was a slick operator. He didn't NEED the six month's notice we were coming for "weapons of mass destruction" for him to ferry it to Syria.)
So they take the towers down. 3,000-or-so Americans died...about twice Pearl Harbor. We're still not "at war"?
The Lacawana 6? The Fort Bliss Cell? The British Bombings? Nope, still not at war, though large numbers of people are dying for no good reason at all. Like Bali.
Let's be clear: we're at war. You're at StarBucks, but we're at war.
No, really, look up "Liberty House" where the Conservatives are trying to take away a Supreme Court Judge's home to install a museum complaining about the act. What, they didn't mention this on CNN? (And no, never heard of the rock band.) (See why I complain? Time for term limits.)