acquiring another language after learning language as an infant does not make you bilingual. Nonsense. Your definition only requires native-like facility, not native-like learning conditions. In other words, the (many!) adults who learn second, third, etc languages well enough to have native-like ease in speaking the language (often this is perceived as "thinking" in the language, not needing to translate from another language into the target language, etc) are truly bilingual.
Native speakers are simply the benchmark for determining how well a language has been learnt. There are plenty of bilingual people who learnt languages as adults and are by any scholarly definition bilingual.
Sometimes, we should chose short-term pain for long-term gain. It is entirely possible that dealing with the problems we have created will hurt our economy in the short-term - many, many people depend on oil & gas production, manufacturing, etc, to earn their livelyhoods and a significantly number of them could lose their jobs. They would need to be retrained, find new jobs, and that is hard and it takes time.
However, when we consider things in a long-term perspective, this is a necessarily evil. Chances are, the economy will be revived as we develop new and different economic engines - production of environmentally friendly transportation, etc. A truly visionary politician is willing to see that long-term plan and work towards it, rather than being held back by the fear of loosing a few jobs.
The fact that the US is non-metric means significantly increased costs for businesses and a barrier to trade. Considering the push in the US to globalise trade (and the realities of a global economy) it makes the most sense from an economic perspective to have the whole world on a single standard - and the rest of the world (as well as the scientific community) has clearly voted on what the standard should be. Furthermore, NASA's foibles show the obvious downside and potential expense of holding on to an outdated system.
I wonder whether this decertification will cause anyone to wonder about the advisedness of using these very same voting machines in elections?
After all, we would not want to use untested electronic equipment in other crucial areas of life, like medical equipment. Why allow them to run/determine elections?
It seems to me that this is just an over-reaction to an objectively minor problem, fueled by the fact that teachers often get terrible working conditions (abusive and hard-to-discipline students, obnoxious and at times abusive parents, little public support, low pay). They are lashing out in an attempt to control some part - any part - of their environment.
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Native speakers are simply the benchmark for determining how well a language has been learnt. There are plenty of bilingual people who learnt languages as adults and are by any scholarly definition bilingual.
Sometimes, we should chose short-term pain for long-term gain. It is entirely possible that dealing with the problems we have created will hurt our economy in the short-term - many, many people depend on oil & gas production, manufacturing, etc, to earn their livelyhoods and a significantly number of them could lose their jobs. They would need to be retrained, find new jobs, and that is hard and it takes time.
However, when we consider things in a long-term perspective, this is a necessarily evil. Chances are, the economy will be revived as we develop new and different economic engines - production of environmentally friendly transportation, etc. A truly visionary politician is willing to see that long-term plan and work towards it, rather than being held back by the fear of loosing a few jobs.
The fact that the US is non-metric means significantly increased costs for businesses and a barrier to trade. Considering the push in the US to globalise trade (and the realities of a global economy) it makes the most sense from an economic perspective to have the whole world on a single standard - and the rest of the world (as well as the scientific community) has clearly voted on what the standard should be. Furthermore, NASA's foibles show the obvious downside and potential expense of holding on to an outdated system.
I wonder whether this decertification will cause anyone to wonder about the advisedness of using these very same voting machines in elections?
After all, we would not want to use untested electronic equipment in other crucial areas of life, like medical equipment. Why allow them to run/determine elections?
It seems to me that this is just an over-reaction to an objectively minor problem, fueled by the fact that teachers often get terrible working conditions (abusive and hard-to-discipline students, obnoxious and at times abusive parents, little public support, low pay). They are lashing out in an attempt to control some part - any part - of their environment.