I'm not sure this is going to help. The Libertarian party, in an effort to be more "inclusive", has become less and less libertarian (small 'l') over the last six years. At their current rate of backsliding on core libertarian principles, by 2008 they'll be about as libertarian as the Republicans these days are fiscally conservative. Lots of hype, very little substance, and in the end you replace one bunch of power-seeking assholes with another bunch of power-seeking assholes. The only difference will be the lies they told the suckers to get themselves in the drivers seat.
I used to vote Libertarian, but after the party re-engineering its 'image' I'll take a pass, thanks. They seem to be far more interested in winning than in actually standing for what they supposedly believe in - just like the Dems and Republicans.
No, we aren't interested in fixing the problem the way that YOU want it fixed. We think that public schools are fundamentally flawed, and have decided to route around them. We do this with OUR child, and if you have a problem with that - too fucking bad. It isn't your decision to make.
We still have to pay taxes, despite the fact that our child doesn't use a single penny of that money for her education. That should be more than enough for you. If you want to 'fix' the public school system, go right ahead - do it. You even get to try on our dime. But don't expect us to do it for you, because we aren't interested.
You don't like the public school system? DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
We did. Our daughter will never go to a public school. That fixes OUR problem right there. It's up to YOU to fix YOUR problem. Try for some personal responsibility, if you can. Your the one concerned about public schools; we're no longer involved with them in any way, shape, or form.
e. Too bad the parent to your post and other posters to my first post didn't bother to try to find out how I came to my conclusions
Your anecdotal evidence doesn't mean shit, which you'd know if your public education did you any good at all. There's a wealth of information showing that home schooling is far superior to public schooling, and none whatsoever to the contrary. All of it published in peer-reviewed, accredited scientific journals. That trumps your personal observations hands-down.
Fortunately, our child will know the difference between 'anecdotal' and 'empirical'.
The longer you sit on your (very possibly) fat, lazy, asses, the more the public school systems will remain in the condition they are in now.
Whine, whine, whine. You expect US to 'fix' the public school system for YOU. I suggest that you get off your fat, lazy, ass and do the job yourself. We don't think it's fixable, and even if it were we'd STILL homeschool our child. Again, you just need to 'suck it up and deal with it' because it isn't our job to conform to what you think we should do, just to make you happy. And to beat a dead horse, you even get to do it with our property taxes!
Really, knock yourself out. I won't hold my breath. And I'm not particularly interested in whether you succeed or fail since, as I said, we've settled on homeschooling and that's that.
Want to make public schools better? Get rid of charter schools, get rid of computer teachers, make it hard to home-school kids, tax the hell out of private schools. Force the community to care about the public schools, rather than try to find new ways for the best students and families to pull out of them.
That's a great solution. Remove the parents' right to educate their children as they see fit, all to prop up the current system in an effort to 'improve' it, whatever that means. Gotta love that dictatorial approach to the problem. Really jives with the whole 'freedom' and 'democracy' thing.
Well in the old days communities recognized the importance of public schools and most students went there--so there was interest in them as institutions.
In the old days there were no compulsory public schools. The institution is a very new one, historically speaking.
eachers are criticized so much as cheap money-grubbing idiots, is it any wonder that students and families and communities are unengaged??
They're unengaged in the public school system. This is not at all the same as saying they aren't interested in educating their children. Hence the explosive growth of homeschooling, and other alternatives.
It's learning how to deal with the little shits that can't be taught in a home-school environment.
Horseshit. You, like many of the other ignoramuses here, seem to think that homeschooled kids are kept in dark basements, away from every other human being, until they turn 18. You couldn't be further from the truth.
Our kids tend to get involved in a hell of a lot more 'extracurricular' activities than yours do, as many others have pointed out. Music lessons, martial arts, sports, clubs, etc. Furthermore, most of us homeschoolers form associations so that our kids can socialize with each other, with other adults, and so forth. We even (gasp!) sometimes swap teaching when it turns out one of us is better at a subject than another (e.g., one parent is a computer programmer, the other a biologist). Call it a 'trade of services'.
You don't have a clue what you're talking about here. Even a cursory googling would show you just how wrong you are, and just how organized WE are. We're a school system, a voluntary one, done right.
Your violent reaction to the very idea that being schooled in the community could have advantages to a student is an example of what I am talking about.
The reaction is understandable. Fucking idiots seem to think that by virtue of drawing breath they have the right to tell us homeschoolers what we should and should not do when it comes to educating our children. We hear it every day, from assholes on all sides, who volunteer their unwanted opinions repeatedly and incessantly, when what they really need to do is just piss off and mind their own business. Or better yet, tend to their own little brats (if they have the balls to assume responsibility for their upbringing, something that seems to be rarer and rarer with every passing day).
As for those who don't have kids, the arrogance of them giving us advice on how to raise kids is laughable at best. Nothing like having an ignorant novice tell you everything that you're doing wrong....
You have to teach them not to yell, hit, bite, tattle, and how to use their words to solve their problems. You have to get them used to the world not revolving around them and get them to understand that their desire to do something is often irrelevant and direct their attention to the task at hand.
That's called "parenting", an apparently lost art in many parts of the First World. So lost, in fact, that some people actually think it's impossible to teach a child these things outside the context of the school system.
Consistency is much harder to provide at home than it is at school where the conditions are well controlled and well suited for the purpose.
The fantasy land you live in is amusing, to say the least. As a teacher I commend you on the development of your imagination!
By providing a change in location, a change in the authority structure and a change in the people surrounding them, you can quickly switch kids into learning mode where as at home they're still in the place where they sleep and play and where most of life's drama and serious stress happens.
Oh, and what did the poor human race do before the advent of that shining light known as compulsory public education? Barbarians, they were; rabid animals, even. Thank the gods that self-proclaimed intellectuals have saved us from those dark days!
Without both of these things, society crumbles.
I guess that's why the Roman Empire only lasted a thousand years. No compulsory public education!
If public schools are so inherently awful, then how does everyone else manage to make it work so well?
They don't, which you'd realize if you did any actual research on the topic. Traditional school systems are failing *everywhere*; it just so happens that the U.S. school system shortfalls are more widely publicized, and U.S. citizens tend to be far more critical than their counterparts in Europe and Asia.
Most parents, from what I've seen as of late, that keep their kids home schooled, do a POOR job of helping them in this respect. Going to a public/private school teaches the kids about schedules, dealing with other people (as mentioned previously), completing assignments (directly translates to your "real" job later in life), etc.
Great. Why don't you provide empirical evidence, published in an accredited, peer-reviewed journal supporting your claims? Fact is, even the U.S. Department of Education admits that homeschooled kids do far better on tests, tend to be considerably more literate (slashspeak: they know the difference between "lose" and "loose"), are usually at least one grade ahead of their public-school peers, etc. Other studies have shown that homeschoolers are more likely to go to college, and earn incomes well in excess of the average.
As for that 'chestnut' about homeschoolers being socially-inept geeks (especially funny, seeing that here on Slashdot), not a single study published in a scientific journal supports this claim. It appears that the people who most often make it are a) public school supporters, or b) parents who're still pissed off that raising a kid is more difficult than taking care of a puppy, and will be damned if they're going to put out any more effort than they already have. Or perhaps are people who're still righteously pissed that THEY had to go through the public school system, and want to inflict that cesspit of contrived age-based caste-system conformity on everyone else's kids as a form of payback.
There are nearly two million homeschoolers in the U.S. alone, and that number is growing explosively with every passing year. It seems that more and more parents are convinced that public schools are shit, and would rather their kid get a real education - one they can use to beat your second-rate whelp with when it comes to, say, getting jobs. Or thinking independently. Or reading above a sixth-grade level.
At any rate, the anti-homeschoolers need to sit down and shut the fuck up. It isn't their business whether someone else's kid is homeschooled or not. And if the homeschooling makes your neighbor's kid more competitive than yours in the workplace, too fucking bad for your little Johnnie. Perhaps he'll learn an important life lesson, along the lines of "suck it up and deal with it".
Just to put this in perspective: I'm a former teacher in the public school system, and am currently teaching at a private academy. The schools ARE shit, and their goal is to produce brain-dead idiots who won't question authority and who can easily be used as interchangeable parts in the corporate world. Note how few 'movers and shakers' went through the public school system, and ask yourself why. It doesn't take a rocket scientist (or any sort of scientist) to figure this one out.
Oh, and my little girl will NEVER set foot in a school, public or private; she'll get the best that I can provide, because ultimately that's my fucking job as a parent. And she'll be one of the ones telling your publicly-educated brat when he can take his vacation days from his McJob, while she spends the summer in Tahiti.
I know you think that all monopolies can only exist if they are government enforced, but reality says that monopolies can exist and be quite stable for a long time, and that the very nature of their power allows them to make their position more stable.
Provide me with a single example from an actual free market. Oh, wait - that's right. *There's never been anything remotely like a free market in the modern world*. Silly me.
But I guess if people keep yapping on about how a government-enforced corporate oligarchy is actually a free market, Orwell-style, then some folks will actually end up believing the bullshit....
If Intel wants to get rid of the sub-standard dead weight it's managed to accumulate over the years, all they need to do is ask their employees to spell the word "lose". Those who spell it "loose" are the obviously morons and can be shit-canned right on the spot; in fact, getting rid of these idiots will probably improve the performance of the company dramatically.
Actually, cages or baskets. They're called crab pots, but they aren't actually pots.
You can do this yourself off the coast of many places in the U.S.; all you need is a) a boat (a small boat will do, such as a speedboat); b) an open-topped cage or metal basket; and c) chum (fish heads, fish guts). The fish heads/guts go into the 'pots', usually on hooks so they don't come loose. The pots are attached to ropes (anything that doesn't rot), and the ropes are attached to small buoys. You lay a dozen or so pots at a time; by the time you've put down the last one you're ready to go back to the first, which you can easily spot care of the brightly-colored buoy.
So you zip on back and begin hauling on the rope as fast as you can. You do this because at this point any crab within smelling distance of the chum has crawled into the pot to eat the fish guts and gets a bit upset if the pot starts rising through the water. By pulling up the rope quickly you use the pressure of the water to keep the crab from climbing out of the pot. Keep this up until the pot surfaces, bring it into the boat, and pick out the crabs you want to eat. Throw everything else back. Repeat this process for the next ten or eleven lines. If you want A LOT of crabs and you don't have a small limit you can lay the pot again as soon as you empty it, then play round-robin until you get tired.
This is the recreational way of crabbing. The commercial way is generally far more efficient. Both result in good eating.
Australia is living proof that these doomsday population explosions CAN AND DO HAPPEN.
Yes, we all live in fear of the cane toad bringing a sudden end to civilization in an orgy of, well, cane-toady-ness. Not to suggest that the tired, overhyped hyperbole-laden whinging about "doomsdays" and such might be overstating the danger somewhat....
whereas John.Q.Internet-Billionare is accountable only to his creditors
So what? It's his money, and in case you've somehow missed it neither you nor anyone else on this mudball 'owns' the space that he's using. The solar system doesn't belong to a bunch of assholes on Earth just because those assholes say it does.
First come first serve, and devil take the hindmost.
I cannot think of a more selfish act than to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to overcome your infertility
I can think of plenty acts far more selfish, but really, it comes down to this: it's MY money. It isn't YOUR money. It isn't up to you how I spend my money. Whether it's on a $50,000 procedure to procreate my genes or the $50,000 price tag of an SUV, the only person who has any business providing any input on what I do with MY money is ME.
artificial insemination methods treat people like animals
Great, that's your opinion. So stick by your guns and don't have kids by artificial insemination. Problem solved. You don't have kids by that method, and those that want it, do.
a philosophy tolerant of that is counter to the proper value for human life needed to build a sustainable and peaceful world.
According to you. But from your posts here on Slashdot, I find your views on what's needed to have a "peaceful' world abhorrent and dystopic. I, for one, have no desire whatsoever to live in the world you think epitomizes paradise.
which if taken to it's logical extreme is about anarchy and destruction
I suppose it would, if you're the sort that composes the majority of Bellevue's clientele. The gap in your logic is so grand I can't even begin to address it.
but after much research concluded that artificial insemination and like procedures are flatly immoral.
And that's where your choice in the matter begins and ends. So long as you realize that everything's cool.
So the fuck what? We're human; we route around the imperfections of our nature. It's called 'adaption', and we're the undisputed masters of of that little trick, care of our brains. I, for one, don't pine for a world where asthmatics, or people allergic to bee stings, or those who have bad teeth are left to die - and fuck 'em - because there's something "biologically wrong" with them. Thanks, but I'll pass on that sort of sick dystopia.
Do YOU want to inflict that problems upon the children?
The point is, in a remotely free society YOU don't get to make that choice for anyone else. Unless you're advocating a new form of slavery based on some set of arbitrary 'breeding standards', you'll just have to suck it up and deal with it.
but these days, it's hard to tell if corrective medicine is actually helping "us" in the long term.
Great. The next time you get a cavity forget the dentist; just let nature run its course and hope the rotting tooth doesn't give you blood poisoning. Hey, if you aren't strong enough to avoid that fate then something must be wrong with you....
but it's true that it makes the rich/medically advanced societies less resistant in the long term.
You assume that despite the vast evidence to the contrary leading right up to this moment in time, for some arcane and unknowable reason technology is suddenly going to stop RIGHT HERE and never advance significantly again. Whatever problems we have, or inflict on ourselves, will be with us forever because nothing will change in any significant way.
Science and technology continue to advance along an asymptotic curve. That's a simple fact. Any problems we have with 'less resistance', whatever that is supposed to mean, will be dealt with so long as civilization doesn't violently implode or turn into a hellish, dictatorial stable-state that would stupify the imagination of even the likes of Orwell. And in that case you (and everyone else) will have much larger worries than whether or not your little Johnnie is in some fashion defective because 'nature wasn't allowed to run its course'.
I would guess that a huge majority of straight and bi women want to do a guy with a big piece one time in their life as a checkmark.
As numerous women have explained it to me, pretty much anything under 5" just isn't worth the effort of repeatedly faking orgasms, while monster johnsons over 9" tend to bang into the cervix (painfully) when the fucking starts getting nice and physical. But 8"....most women seem to think that's a great size, and a vast improvement over a measly 6".
The majority of men, in case you didn't know, are around 6" or so in length. Which is why women lie so much about size not counting. And thicker...well, thicker is ALWAYS better....
When you take an action as personally significant as sex and then make it primarily about self pleasure the result spills over into the rest of life.
This has to be one of the most insane arguments I've ever heard anywhere, much less on Slashdot. To blame BIRTH CONTROL for the worlds ills is madness. I only thank the various and sundry gods that folks like you don't, and will never, have the power to enforce your views on others.
Therefore, killing an unborn child is against the principles of libertarianism because they infringe on the rights of another human; the unborn child.
What unmitigated bullshit. The fundamental principles of libertarianism are based on an abhorrence of slavery in all of its forms, and this includes forcing women to bear unwanted children just because your pet moral code thinks that this is a fine and dandy way to run a society. Libertarianism - real libertarianism - spits in the face of your tired, old religious fundie claptrap.
Don't think for a moment that you and your kind have anything to do with libertarianism. You don't and you never will. Although I'm sure Orwell would be proud of how you've managed to make a word mean its exact opposite without raising a red flag among the rest of the slashdotters here.
The UK declared war because an ally (Poland)was invaded
Poland was the excuse, not the reason. The Brits were scared shitless of the Germans, who they saw as the primary threat to their own shoddy and rapidly failing empire. The Germans had put a bug up their shorts just a couple of decades back, and seeing them rise so quickly from the ashes of that last humiliating victory made the Brits quake in their boots - especially given how pissed off the Germans were over Versailles.
Only once Germany was on the back foot and the Allies had ivaded France did tanks comes into play.
You forgot about the British Expeditionary force, which was virtually destroyed when the Germans blitzed France. Y'know, those brave 'never surrender!' types who valiantly retreated as fast as they fucking could to Dunkirk, then got the hell off the continent.
And as for the lend-lease programme, that only began 3 months before the end of the Battle of Britain.
The Lend-Lease program was the Congressionally-approved version of what Roosevelt had been doing ever since the start of the war - supplying the Brits with needed goods and materials. There's a reason the Germans were sinking American merchantmen, and it wasn't just because they were bored and looking for target practice.
Roosevelt had every intention of going to war with the Germans. Americans, however, were isolationists and most of 'em didn't give a rat's ass over the war in Europe. Congress adamantly refused to take sides, so Roosevelt usurped their power and did it for them. This rightly pissed off the Germans, who had no choice but to play into Roosevelt's hands.
Roosevelt also supplied the Soviets and the Nationalist Chinese, all against the express will of Congress. He overstepped his bounds so badly that after his death Congress tripped all over themselves to sell an amendment to the Constitution limiting the President to two terms.
The Brits didn't win the war. They helped to win it by grinding down the Germans, just as the Soviets did, but they weren't in any fucking position to actually do anything other than defend their own island - and even that wouldn't have been possible for long without massive American assistance. Something to do with U-boats, I'm told. The Americans *were* the Western Front, plain and simple.
I want to live a life again where going to McDonald's was the rarest of treats, and having enough food to eat every day until the next paycheck my parents brought in was an exception, not the rule.
I want to go back to a time when I wasn't allowed to make my own decisions, or spend my time in the fashion that pleases me most. Back to a time when just about everyone else in the world had the authority to tell me "no", sometimes for good reasons, sometimes simply because they knew I couldn't fight back.
I want to go back to a time when an angry mother would haul off and beat me with a rolling pin, or force open my mouth and pour a bottle of tabasco down it, all in the name of "discipline".
I want to go back to a time when children would sometimes torture each other for no particular reason, engaging in childish evil simply for the sake of being evil, while adults shrugged it off as "kids will be kids". Back to a time when adults naively told each other that it's impossible for children, those little darlings, to be cruel, vicious monsters.
I want to go back to being at the mercy of a drunken father who spent so much of his paycheck on booze that there often wasn't enough left to cover the bills, much less buy basic necessities. And with that the constant screaming fights between parents who couldn't stand one another, yet didn't know what else to do except try to live with one another.
I want to go back to a time when religion was rammed down my throat, and any attempt to repudiate the house gods ended up with a furious parent shoving a bar of soap into my mouth to "wash it out".
I want to return to a time of never knowing whether a parent would actually come home that day, especially after one of the regular marital blowouts, and being afraid that they'd never come back - or sometimes, that they would.
Yep, I want a return to fear and misery and despair, to destitution and hunger, to hopelessness. I want to return to a time when I had no control whatsoever over anything at all in my world, and when others did whatever the hell they felt like to me because I was too small to fight back. I want to return to the world where every day I prayed I'd grow up just a little bit faster, so that I could become an adult that much quicker and get far, far away from my own personal and very real hell.
Sometimes, people forget that the happy middle-class childhood envisioned in Hallmark-style e-chainletters was something enjoyed by only a tiny minority of people on the planet. The rest of us weren't quite so lucky.
The only one there that was ultruistic was Britain as they declared war on Germany because what Germany was doing was wrong.
No, they set themselves up for a war with Germany because Germany challenged their failing hegemony. They refused to recognize the fucking writing on the wall, that the British Empire was shit decaying in the summer sun...until the point was driven home to them via tank, plane and sub. There was nothing whatsoever altruistic about Britain's stand against a European challenger, one that made them shit their pants for the very same reasons only a generation before.
Russia was the main force (they had also been attacked by Germany like the US) that went, Britain was the second force
You've got to be kidding. The Brits were practically inconsequential by the time we invaded France. Churchill himself said that they would've surrendered had the Americans not entered the war when they did...and would've done so much earlier if the Americans hadn't been supplying them with weapons, munitions, food, tools, spare parts, and so on since the start of the war.
What the Brits did do, and well, was soak up a hell of a lot of Germany's time, attention and resources. That was the intended goal when Roosevelt decided to supply them 'under the table' and against the will of the majority of Congress - since Roosevelt intended to go to war with the Germans right from the get-go. This softened up the Germans considerably when the Americans finally did invade Europe. We did the same thing with the Russians (Lend-Lease, etc.) and for the exact same reasons.
is perfectly leagal as a practical extention of the Patriot Act
So long as you ignore the Constitution, that is. But who really gives a shit about that stupid piece of paper anymore? After all, the people who wrote it were a bunch of fucking barbarians who didn't even have, like, TV!
Also, who the fuck cares if the government is looking at Joe Sixpack's bank info?
Perhaps Joe Sixpack - y'know, the guy the government supposedly works FOR. In case you've forgotten, the government, along with our elected representatives, were intended to be our SERVANTS, not our leaders. Their job is to get on their fucking knees and suck our dicks whenever we tell them to, and to thank us for the privilege after. The situation was NEVER supposed to be reversed.
And don't start with bullshit slippery slope arguments
'Cuz, like, they're far too difficult for you to follow. Sweet Jesus, if ever there were an argument against universal suffrage, you'd be the poster child for it.
this is not some insidious plot by the government to erode our civil liberties.
Apparently the study of history isn't something you've ever put your mind to. Governments are ALWAYS interested in eroding civil liberties, because the only way to get power is to take it from others. And in case you haven't noticed, the people who WANT power are the ones who work their way into government office in the first place.
It's a flawed system. Anyone who wants the job is one of the last people in the world you actually want to give it to. But rather than come up with a different way of doing things, we get to choose between a list of scumbags, hoping that the person we're voting for is the least evil among the lot. On the rare occasions when a real idealist gets voted into office, they're either a) corrupted, or b) destroyed if they can't be corrupted.
Someone here is involved in a huge breach of security
And here's hoping for more such breaches in the future. Since the government thinks it apparently doesn't need to inform me, it's employer, about what it's up to, I have to rely on leaks to get that information.
Just great. So long as things go to shit slowly, you're perfectly okay with that. It doesn't matter that we'll all end up in some neo-fascist nightmare at the end of that long slow slide no matter which party wins; it just needs to happen at a pace that won't ruffle your feathers. Preferably you'll be dead of old age before it's time to pay the piper.
Boomer politics in a nutshell. Slow it down long enough to pass the real shitstorm to my children and grandchildren so that I'm not inconvenienced by it.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure this is going to help. The Libertarian party, in an effort to be more "inclusive", has become less and less libertarian (small 'l') over the last six years. At their current rate of backsliding on core libertarian principles, by 2008 they'll be about as libertarian as the Republicans these days are fiscally conservative. Lots of hype, very little substance, and in the end you replace one bunch of power-seeking assholes with another bunch of power-seeking assholes. The only difference will be the lies they told the suckers to get themselves in the drivers seat.
I used to vote Libertarian, but after the party re-engineering its 'image' I'll take a pass, thanks. They seem to be far more interested in winning than in actually standing for what they supposedly believe in - just like the Dems and Republicans.
Max
do absolutely NOTHING to fix the problem at all.
No, we aren't interested in fixing the problem the way that YOU want it fixed. We think that public schools are fundamentally flawed, and have decided to route around them. We do this with OUR child, and if you have a problem with that - too fucking bad. It isn't your decision to make.
We still have to pay taxes, despite the fact that our child doesn't use a single penny of that money for her education. That should be more than enough for you. If you want to 'fix' the public school system, go right ahead - do it. You even get to try on our dime. But don't expect us to do it for you, because we aren't interested.
You don't like the public school system? DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
We did. Our daughter will never go to a public school. That fixes OUR problem right there. It's up to YOU to fix YOUR problem. Try for some personal responsibility, if you can. Your the one concerned about public schools; we're no longer involved with them in any way, shape, or form.
e. Too bad the parent to your post and other posters to my first post didn't bother to try to find out how I came to my conclusions
Your anecdotal evidence doesn't mean shit, which you'd know if your public education did you any good at all. There's a wealth of information showing that home schooling is far superior to public schooling, and none whatsoever to the contrary. All of it published in peer-reviewed, accredited scientific journals. That trumps your personal observations hands-down.
Fortunately, our child will know the difference between 'anecdotal' and 'empirical'.
The longer you sit on your (very possibly) fat, lazy, asses, the more the public school systems will remain in the condition they are in now.
Whine, whine, whine. You expect US to 'fix' the public school system for YOU. I suggest that you get off your fat, lazy, ass and do the job yourself. We don't think it's fixable, and even if it were we'd STILL homeschool our child. Again, you just need to 'suck it up and deal with it' because it isn't our job to conform to what you think we should do, just to make you happy. And to beat a dead horse, you even get to do it with our property taxes!
Really, knock yourself out. I won't hold my breath. And I'm not particularly interested in whether you succeed or fail since, as I said, we've settled on homeschooling and that's that.
Max
Want to make public schools better? Get rid of charter schools, get rid of computer teachers, make it hard to home-school kids, tax the hell out of private schools. Force the community to care about the public schools, rather than try to find new ways for the best students and families to pull out of them.
That's a great solution. Remove the parents' right to educate their children as they see fit, all to prop up the current system in an effort to 'improve' it, whatever that means. Gotta love that dictatorial approach to the problem. Really jives with the whole 'freedom' and 'democracy' thing.
Well in the old days communities recognized the importance of public schools and most students went there--so there was interest in them as institutions.
In the old days there were no compulsory public schools. The institution is a very new one, historically speaking.
eachers are criticized so much as cheap money-grubbing idiots, is it any wonder that students and families and communities are unengaged??
They're unengaged in the public school system. This is not at all the same as saying they aren't interested in educating their children. Hence the explosive growth of homeschooling, and other alternatives.
Max
It's learning how to deal with the little shits that can't be taught in a home-school environment.
Horseshit. You, like many of the other ignoramuses here, seem to think that homeschooled kids are kept in dark basements, away from every other human being, until they turn 18. You couldn't be further from the truth.
Our kids tend to get involved in a hell of a lot more 'extracurricular' activities than yours do, as many others have pointed out. Music lessons, martial arts, sports, clubs, etc. Furthermore, most of us homeschoolers form associations so that our kids can socialize with each other, with other adults, and so forth. We even (gasp!) sometimes swap teaching when it turns out one of us is better at a subject than another (e.g., one parent is a computer programmer, the other a biologist). Call it a 'trade of services'.
You don't have a clue what you're talking about here. Even a cursory googling would show you just how wrong you are, and just how organized WE are. We're a school system, a voluntary one, done right.
Max
Your violent reaction to the very idea that being schooled in the community could have advantages to a student is an example of what I am talking about.
The reaction is understandable. Fucking idiots seem to think that by virtue of drawing breath they have the right to tell us homeschoolers what we should and should not do when it comes to educating our children. We hear it every day, from assholes on all sides, who volunteer their unwanted opinions repeatedly and incessantly, when what they really need to do is just piss off and mind their own business. Or better yet, tend to their own little brats (if they have the balls to assume responsibility for their upbringing, something that seems to be rarer and rarer with every passing day).
As for those who don't have kids, the arrogance of them giving us advice on how to raise kids is laughable at best. Nothing like having an ignorant novice tell you everything that you're doing wrong....
Max
You have to teach them not to yell, hit, bite, tattle, and how to use their words to solve their problems. You have to get them used to the world not revolving around them and get them to understand that their desire to do something is often irrelevant and direct their attention to the task at hand.
That's called "parenting", an apparently lost art in many parts of the First World. So lost, in fact, that some people actually think it's impossible to teach a child these things outside the context of the school system.
Consistency is much harder to provide at home than it is at school where the conditions are well controlled and well suited for the purpose.
The fantasy land you live in is amusing, to say the least. As a teacher I commend you on the development of your imagination!
By providing a change in location, a change in the authority structure and a change in the people surrounding them, you can quickly switch kids into learning mode where as at home they're still in the place where they sleep and play and where most of life's drama and serious stress happens.
Oh, and what did the poor human race do before the advent of that shining light known as compulsory public education? Barbarians, they were; rabid animals, even. Thank the gods that self-proclaimed intellectuals have saved us from those dark days!
Without both of these things, society crumbles.
I guess that's why the Roman Empire only lasted a thousand years. No compulsory public education!
Max
If public schools are so inherently awful, then how does everyone else manage to make it work so well?
They don't, which you'd realize if you did any actual research on the topic. Traditional school systems are failing *everywhere*; it just so happens that the U.S. school system shortfalls are more widely publicized, and U.S. citizens tend to be far more critical than their counterparts in Europe and Asia.
Max
Most parents, from what I've seen as of late, that keep their kids home schooled, do a POOR job of helping them in this respect. Going to a public/private school teaches the kids about schedules, dealing with other people (as mentioned previously), completing assignments (directly translates to your "real" job later in life), etc.
Great. Why don't you provide empirical evidence, published in an accredited, peer-reviewed journal supporting your claims? Fact is, even the U.S. Department of Education admits that homeschooled kids do far better on tests, tend to be considerably more literate (slashspeak: they know the difference between "lose" and "loose"), are usually at least one grade ahead of their public-school peers, etc. Other studies have shown that homeschoolers are more likely to go to college, and earn incomes well in excess of the average.
As for that 'chestnut' about homeschoolers being socially-inept geeks (especially funny, seeing that here on Slashdot), not a single study published in a scientific journal supports this claim. It appears that the people who most often make it are a) public school supporters, or b) parents who're still pissed off that raising a kid is more difficult than taking care of a puppy, and will be damned if they're going to put out any more effort than they already have. Or perhaps are people who're still righteously pissed that THEY had to go through the public school system, and want to inflict that cesspit of contrived age-based caste-system conformity on everyone else's kids as a form of payback.
There are nearly two million homeschoolers in the U.S. alone, and that number is growing explosively with every passing year. It seems that more and more parents are convinced that public schools are shit, and would rather their kid get a real education - one they can use to beat your second-rate whelp with when it comes to, say, getting jobs. Or thinking independently. Or reading above a sixth-grade level.
At any rate, the anti-homeschoolers need to sit down and shut the fuck up. It isn't their business whether someone else's kid is homeschooled or not. And if the homeschooling makes your neighbor's kid more competitive than yours in the workplace, too fucking bad for your little Johnnie. Perhaps he'll learn an important life lesson, along the lines of "suck it up and deal with it".
Just to put this in perspective: I'm a former teacher in the public school system, and am currently teaching at a private academy. The schools ARE shit, and their goal is to produce brain-dead idiots who won't question authority and who can easily be used as interchangeable parts in the corporate world. Note how few 'movers and shakers' went through the public school system, and ask yourself why. It doesn't take a rocket scientist (or any sort of scientist) to figure this one out.
Oh, and my little girl will NEVER set foot in a school, public or private; she'll get the best that I can provide, because ultimately that's my fucking job as a parent. And she'll be one of the ones telling your publicly-educated brat when he can take his vacation days from his McJob, while she spends the summer in Tahiti.
Max
I know you think that all monopolies can only exist if they are government enforced, but reality says that monopolies can exist and be quite stable for a long time, and that the very nature of their power allows them to make their position more stable.
Provide me with a single example from an actual free market. Oh, wait - that's right. *There's never been anything remotely like a free market in the modern world*. Silly me.
But I guess if people keep yapping on about how a government-enforced corporate oligarchy is actually a free market, Orwell-style, then some folks will actually end up believing the bullshit....
Max
If Intel wants to get rid of the sub-standard dead weight it's managed to accumulate over the years, all they need to do is ask their employees to spell the word "lose". Those who spell it "loose" are the obviously morons and can be shit-canned right on the spot; in fact, getting rid of these idiots will probably improve the performance of the company dramatically.
Max
Actually, cages or baskets. They're called crab pots, but they aren't actually pots.
You can do this yourself off the coast of many places in the U.S.; all you need is a) a boat (a small boat will do, such as a speedboat); b) an open-topped cage or metal basket; and c) chum (fish heads, fish guts). The fish heads/guts go into the 'pots', usually on hooks so they don't come loose. The pots are attached to ropes (anything that doesn't rot), and the ropes are attached to small buoys. You lay a dozen or so pots at a time; by the time you've put down the last one you're ready to go back to the first, which you can easily spot care of the brightly-colored buoy.
So you zip on back and begin hauling on the rope as fast as you can. You do this because at this point any crab within smelling distance of the chum has crawled into the pot to eat the fish guts and gets a bit upset if the pot starts rising through the water. By pulling up the rope quickly you use the pressure of the water to keep the crab from climbing out of the pot. Keep this up until the pot surfaces, bring it into the boat, and pick out the crabs you want to eat. Throw everything else back. Repeat this process for the next ten or eleven lines. If you want A LOT of crabs and you don't have a small limit you can lay the pot again as soon as you empty it, then play round-robin until you get tired.
This is the recreational way of crabbing. The commercial way is generally far more efficient. Both result in good eating.
Max
Australia is living proof that these doomsday population explosions CAN AND DO HAPPEN.
Yes, we all live in fear of the cane toad bringing a sudden end to civilization in an orgy of, well, cane-toady-ness. Not to suggest that the tired, overhyped hyperbole-laden whinging about "doomsdays" and such might be overstating the danger somewhat....
Max
whereas John.Q.Internet-Billionare is accountable only to his creditors
So what? It's his money, and in case you've somehow missed it neither you nor anyone else on this mudball 'owns' the space that he's using. The solar system doesn't belong to a bunch of assholes on Earth just because those assholes say it does.
First come first serve, and devil take the hindmost.
Max
I cannot think of a more selfish act than to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to overcome your infertility
I can think of plenty acts far more selfish, but really, it comes down to this: it's MY money. It isn't YOUR money. It isn't up to you how I spend my money. Whether it's on a $50,000 procedure to procreate my genes or the $50,000 price tag of an SUV, the only person who has any business providing any input on what I do with MY money is ME.
Max
artificial insemination methods treat people like animals
Great, that's your opinion. So stick by your guns and don't have kids by artificial insemination. Problem solved. You don't have kids by that method, and those that want it, do.
a philosophy tolerant of that is counter to the proper value for human life needed to build a sustainable and peaceful world.
According to you. But from your posts here on Slashdot, I find your views on what's needed to have a "peaceful' world abhorrent and dystopic. I, for one, have no desire whatsoever to live in the world you think epitomizes paradise.
which if taken to it's logical extreme is about anarchy and destruction
I suppose it would, if you're the sort that composes the majority of Bellevue's clientele. The gap in your logic is so grand I can't even begin to address it.
but after much research concluded that artificial insemination and like procedures are flatly immoral.
And that's where your choice in the matter begins and ends. So long as you realize that everything's cool.
Max
No conception -> something's biologically wrong
So the fuck what? We're human; we route around the imperfections of our nature. It's called 'adaption', and we're the undisputed masters of of that little trick, care of our brains. I, for one, don't pine for a world where asthmatics, or people allergic to bee stings, or those who have bad teeth are left to die - and fuck 'em - because there's something "biologically wrong" with them. Thanks, but I'll pass on that sort of sick dystopia.
Do YOU want to inflict that problems upon the children?
The point is, in a remotely free society YOU don't get to make that choice for anyone else. Unless you're advocating a new form of slavery based on some set of arbitrary 'breeding standards', you'll just have to suck it up and deal with it.
but these days, it's hard to tell if corrective medicine is actually helping "us" in the long term.
Great. The next time you get a cavity forget the dentist; just let nature run its course and hope the rotting tooth doesn't give you blood poisoning. Hey, if you aren't strong enough to avoid that fate then something must be wrong with you....
but it's true that it makes the rich/medically advanced societies less resistant in the long term.
You assume that despite the vast evidence to the contrary leading right up to this moment in time, for some arcane and unknowable reason technology is suddenly going to stop RIGHT HERE and never advance significantly again. Whatever problems we have, or inflict on ourselves, will be with us forever because nothing will change in any significant way.
Science and technology continue to advance along an asymptotic curve. That's a simple fact. Any problems we have with 'less resistance', whatever that is supposed to mean, will be dealt with so long as civilization doesn't violently implode or turn into a hellish, dictatorial stable-state that would stupify the imagination of even the likes of Orwell. And in that case you (and everyone else) will have much larger worries than whether or not your little Johnnie is in some fashion defective because 'nature wasn't allowed to run its course'.
Max
I would guess that a huge majority of straight and bi women want to do a guy with a big piece one time in their life as a checkmark.
As numerous women have explained it to me, pretty much anything under 5" just isn't worth the effort of repeatedly faking orgasms, while monster johnsons over 9" tend to bang into the cervix (painfully) when the fucking starts getting nice and physical. But 8"....most women seem to think that's a great size, and a vast improvement over a measly 6".
The majority of men, in case you didn't know, are around 6" or so in length. Which is why women lie so much about size not counting. And thicker...well, thicker is ALWAYS better....
Max
When you take an action as personally significant as sex and then make it primarily about self pleasure the result spills over into the rest of life.
This has to be one of the most insane arguments I've ever heard anywhere, much less on Slashdot. To blame BIRTH CONTROL for the worlds ills is madness. I only thank the various and sundry gods that folks like you don't, and will never, have the power to enforce your views on others.
Max
Therefore, killing an unborn child is against the principles of libertarianism because they infringe on the rights of another human; the unborn child.
What unmitigated bullshit. The fundamental principles of libertarianism are based on an abhorrence of slavery in all of its forms, and this includes forcing women to bear unwanted children just because your pet moral code thinks that this is a fine and dandy way to run a society. Libertarianism - real libertarianism - spits in the face of your tired, old religious fundie claptrap.
Don't think for a moment that you and your kind have anything to do with libertarianism. You don't and you never will. Although I'm sure Orwell would be proud of how you've managed to make a word mean its exact opposite without raising a red flag among the rest of the slashdotters here.
Max
And if you don't like it then don't fucking watch it. What exactly is so hard to grasp about that?
Oh, I forget - this is Australia we're talking about, a country that makes America look like a bastion of free-thinking liberalism by comparison....
Max
The UK declared war because an ally (Poland)was invaded
Poland was the excuse, not the reason. The Brits were scared shitless of the Germans, who they saw as the primary threat to their own shoddy and rapidly failing empire. The Germans had put a bug up their shorts just a couple of decades back, and seeing them rise so quickly from the ashes of that last humiliating victory made the Brits quake in their boots - especially given how pissed off the Germans were over Versailles.
Only once Germany was on the back foot and the Allies had ivaded France did tanks comes into play.
You forgot about the British Expeditionary force, which was virtually destroyed when the Germans blitzed France. Y'know, those brave 'never surrender!' types who valiantly retreated as fast as they fucking could to Dunkirk, then got the hell off the continent.
And as for the lend-lease programme, that only began 3 months before the end of the Battle of Britain.
The Lend-Lease program was the Congressionally-approved version of what Roosevelt had been doing ever since the start of the war - supplying the Brits with needed goods and materials. There's a reason the Germans were sinking American merchantmen, and it wasn't just because they were bored and looking for target practice.
Roosevelt had every intention of going to war with the Germans. Americans, however, were isolationists and most of 'em didn't give a rat's ass over the war in Europe. Congress adamantly refused to take sides, so Roosevelt usurped their power and did it for them. This rightly pissed off the Germans, who had no choice but to play into Roosevelt's hands.
Roosevelt also supplied the Soviets and the Nationalist Chinese, all against the express will of Congress. He overstepped his bounds so badly that after his death Congress tripped all over themselves to sell an amendment to the Constitution limiting the President to two terms.
The Brits didn't win the war. They helped to win it by grinding down the Germans, just as the Soviets did, but they weren't in any fucking position to actually do anything other than defend their own island - and even that wouldn't have been possible for long without massive American assistance. Something to do with U-boats, I'm told. The Americans *were* the Western Front, plain and simple.
Max
I want to live a life again where going to McDonald's was the rarest of treats, and having enough food to eat every day until the next paycheck my parents brought in was an exception, not the rule.
I want to go back to a time when I wasn't allowed to make my own decisions, or spend my time in the fashion that pleases me most. Back to a time when just about everyone else in the world had the authority to tell me "no", sometimes for good reasons, sometimes simply because they knew I couldn't fight back.
I want to go back to a time when an angry mother would haul off and beat me with a rolling pin, or force open my mouth and pour a bottle of tabasco down it, all in the name of "discipline".
I want to go back to a time when children would sometimes torture each other for no particular reason, engaging in childish evil simply for the sake of being evil, while adults shrugged it off as "kids will be kids". Back to a time when adults naively told each other that it's impossible for children, those little darlings, to be cruel, vicious monsters.
I want to go back to being at the mercy of a drunken father who spent so much of his paycheck on booze that there often wasn't enough left to cover the bills, much less buy basic necessities. And with that the constant screaming fights between parents who couldn't stand one another, yet didn't know what else to do except try to live with one another.
I want to go back to a time when religion was rammed down my throat, and any attempt to repudiate the house gods ended up with a furious parent shoving a bar of soap into my mouth to "wash it out".
I want to return to a time of never knowing whether a parent would actually come home that day, especially after one of the regular marital blowouts, and being afraid that they'd never come back - or sometimes, that they would.
Yep, I want a return to fear and misery and despair, to destitution and hunger, to hopelessness. I want to return to a time when I had no control whatsoever over anything at all in my world, and when others did whatever the hell they felt like to me because I was too small to fight back. I want to return to the world where every day I prayed I'd grow up just a little bit faster, so that I could become an adult that much quicker and get far, far away from my own personal and very real hell.
Sometimes, people forget that the happy middle-class childhood envisioned in Hallmark-style e-chainletters was something enjoyed by only a tiny minority of people on the planet. The rest of us weren't quite so lucky.
Max
The only one there that was ultruistic was Britain as they declared war on Germany because what Germany was doing was wrong.
No, they set themselves up for a war with Germany because Germany challenged their failing hegemony. They refused to recognize the fucking writing on the wall, that the British Empire was shit decaying in the summer sun...until the point was driven home to them via tank, plane and sub. There was nothing whatsoever altruistic about Britain's stand against a European challenger, one that made them shit their pants for the very same reasons only a generation before.
Russia was the main force (they had also been attacked by Germany like the US) that went, Britain was the second force
You've got to be kidding. The Brits were practically inconsequential by the time we invaded France. Churchill himself said that they would've surrendered had the Americans not entered the war when they did...and would've done so much earlier if the Americans hadn't been supplying them with weapons, munitions, food, tools, spare parts, and so on since the start of the war.
What the Brits did do, and well, was soak up a hell of a lot of Germany's time, attention and resources. That was the intended goal when Roosevelt decided to supply them 'under the table' and against the will of the majority of Congress - since Roosevelt intended to go to war with the Germans right from the get-go. This softened up the Germans considerably when the Americans finally did invade Europe. We did the same thing with the Russians (Lend-Lease, etc.) and for the exact same reasons.
Max
is perfectly leagal as a practical extention of the Patriot Act
So long as you ignore the Constitution, that is. But who really gives a shit about that stupid piece of paper anymore? After all, the people who wrote it were a bunch of fucking barbarians who didn't even have, like, TV!
Also, who the fuck cares if the government is looking at Joe Sixpack's bank info?
Perhaps Joe Sixpack - y'know, the guy the government supposedly works FOR. In case you've forgotten, the government, along with our elected representatives, were intended to be our SERVANTS, not our leaders. Their job is to get on their fucking knees and suck our dicks whenever we tell them to, and to thank us for the privilege after. The situation was NEVER supposed to be reversed.
And don't start with bullshit slippery slope arguments
'Cuz, like, they're far too difficult for you to follow. Sweet Jesus, if ever there were an argument against universal suffrage, you'd be the poster child for it.
this is not some insidious plot by the government to erode our civil liberties.
Apparently the study of history isn't something you've ever put your mind to. Governments are ALWAYS interested in eroding civil liberties, because the only way to get power is to take it from others. And in case you haven't noticed, the people who WANT power are the ones who work their way into government office in the first place.
It's a flawed system. Anyone who wants the job is one of the last people in the world you actually want to give it to. But rather than come up with a different way of doing things, we get to choose between a list of scumbags, hoping that the person we're voting for is the least evil among the lot. On the rare occasions when a real idealist gets voted into office, they're either a) corrupted, or b) destroyed if they can't be corrupted.
Someone here is involved in a huge breach of security
And here's hoping for more such breaches in the future. Since the government thinks it apparently doesn't need to inform me, it's employer, about what it's up to, I have to rely on leaks to get that information.
Max
Just great. So long as things go to shit slowly, you're perfectly okay with that. It doesn't matter that we'll all end up in some neo-fascist nightmare at the end of that long slow slide no matter which party wins; it just needs to happen at a pace that won't ruffle your feathers. Preferably you'll be dead of old age before it's time to pay the piper.
Boomer politics in a nutshell. Slow it down long enough to pass the real shitstorm to my children and grandchildren so that I'm not inconvenienced by it.
Max