Wait-and-see is pretty clever. One time I found $20 at a skating rink and foolishly held it up and said "Hey did anybody lose $20". A dozen kids all said they did, so I kept it.
Why do teachers have to be the best and brightest, or even in the top 1/3? College professors, absolutely. Their students are very advanced and are looking to establish expertise themselves. But a middle school teacher or elementary school teacher? You want every 8 year old in the US to have a "science" teacher (note generic form) who has an advanced science-related degree and was in the top of their class? They don't need to be experts to answer "Ms. X why is the sky blue??" for the 100th time.
People have ridiculous expectations of teachers. Even if you increased their salary and attracted the best minds in the country, guess what, their job is teaching the same thing over and over to new kids every semester.
First of all, not many people who excelled in a challenging academic environment want to do that for their entire careers, it's not intellectually stimulating enough. You have to want to work with kids and see their unique problems, which are generally not scholarly in nature. Do you have any idea how odd it would be for a child to sit up at nights worried about the paradoxes in naive set theory? THAT would be interesting, at least the first few times. But it doesn't happen. It's stuff like "My mom and dad are getting divorced" or "I'm living with my aunt but she doesn't make me lunch and I don't have money."
And second, to be a motivational teacher (what people often mean by "good"), you yourself have to be motivated by the pleasure of seeing someone "get" something for the first time, even when it's your 100th time seeing it. The connection between that and being in the top of your class in college is non-existent, at least to me. If teaching paid $150k a year, I'd do it, but I wouldn't enjoy it. And although my qualifications would be better than many current-day teachers, I seriously doubt that I would be a better teacher in the sense that the kids I taught started loving the subject.
In conclusion, I think the best teachers are marked by their personalities, not their academic backgrounds, and I think that it's rare enough that it doesn't scale to a national education system. We should pay *some* teachers more if they are good, but the reality we have to accept is that like in any profession most will be mediocre, and that's good enough. There will always be students who fail or cannot be reached, that's just a cost of society.
Even if your numbers were right, the key there is "if the system keeps failing them." It's very rare for someone to have nothing but bad teachers for many years in a row. Pretty much everybody has a great teacher at some point, and many good teachers scattered around.
Nonsense... a good number of private schools are religious and aren't selective at all. My nephew went to one that was really cheap. It was a terrible school imho, but since he didn't make it in the advanced/honors classes in public school it ended up being a better option.
You're thinking of the $40k/year private schools. That's a tiny minority.
I'm not going to be sitting around for years looking back and thinking "Oh man I wish those doctors tried harder to save me" I'll be dead.
That's true of anything. Oh, you didn't get that heart transplant you desperately needed? Well after you're dead you won't care. A bit callous I think to dismiss people's fears like that.
Not just funeral expenses but end of life expenses. From Mayo Clinic:
Myth: My family will be charged if I donate my organs. Fact: The organ donor's family is never charged for donating. The family is charged for the cost of all final efforts to save your life, and those costs are sometimes misinterpreted as costs related to organ donation. Costs for organ removal go to the transplant recipient.
Hey your dad died, but good news, we took all his organs and pumped them into this $20 billion/year industry, and we aren't giving you anything. Oh, except we're giving you this bill for our blatant failure to save him.
Is it acceptable to let ten thousand people die from lack of organ transplants in order to avoid each one case where someone not quite brain dead is accidentally killed?
Yes, any number is acceptable since this is a matter of consent. There's no point arguing how many lives you save or that accidents don't matter because we've already established that this is an optional, lucky thing for the transplant recipient, not something to be counted on. The answer should be to make the donor form a little more thorough, and somehow ask about these accidental things. If someone says "Yes donate my organs even if there's an x% chance I will recover" then go for it.
Re:I have an organ donor card...
on
When Are You Dead?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
That's some faulty logic. With so much money at stake, warlords aren't killing people to harvest organs. Poor people voluntarily do it for a small cut of the profits. The black market already exists, and the laws are keeping those black market activities alive.
The donors were recruited mostly from the slums of Brazil, flown to South Africa where the operation was performed, compensated between $6,000 to $10,000 and returned home [source: Rohter]. The South African middlemen were then able to sell the organs for as much as $100,000 [source: Handwerk].
There's absolutely NO POINT in banning compensation to the donor, because as soon as the organs are harvested, the people who have them can sell them. What do you think would change if organ donors received $500k in the US, except that the shortage of organs would fall?
There's no way you could fill the entire teaching industry with great teachers who all deserve significantly more money. There are too many spots to fill. The answer is merit based pay where some teachers earn more and others earn less.
The question is what type of success do we want to reward? For a long time the focus has been on teachers who can work with really awful students and make them slightly less awful. I suspect we'd get better results as a society from more focus on the mid to high performing students.
If you're so (pardon the term) drunk on the taste and sensation of a beer with your dinner that you're in danger of going over, maybe you can't be trusted to know the limit in the first place.
Do you have a moral problem with alcohol? Otherwise I don't understand why you hold it above everything else that might cause impairment.. like eating too much, driving while having to go to the bathroom, driving with kids in the car, driving with loud music, etc. The front line troops of the war on drunk driving are quite obviously motivated by moral issues just like the prudes who supported prohibition.
Thinking of my friends and family and the car accidents they've been in, alcohol was never involved. It was always other distractions. The most serious accident involved a friend of mine who was so focused on adjusting the radio (in a new car) that he rear ended another car at high speed. This was when he was 17 or 18. I bet you anything that there are a ton of sober 17 year olds who are more dangerous than a typical 32 year old with a BAC of 0.1.
Driving will always have an element of danger to it. Far better than focusing on harsh drunk driving laws would be encouraging defensive driving and doing things to reduce the number of drivers on the road with harder driving tests, narrower age limits (including an upper age limit), and better public transportation. Defensive driving is probably the most important of those.. twice in the past decade that I slowed almost to a stop at a green light because someone was quite obviously going to run their red light. Both of those had a decent chance of becoming a major accident if I hadn't noticed and the other person hadn't noticed at the last second either.
If your new argument is that they were already at war, then you can't claim that Israel went to war over the Suez Canal nationalization or used it as "the Israeli standard for what is considered offensive action by its neighbours." Now it's not just the seizure, but also the fact that their neighbors maintained a state of war for years, constantly antagonizing Israel while building their own strength for a future showdown, which rather destroys your point.
I'm not saying Israel doesn't share blame over the general conflict, but the example you picked was chosen to paint Israel as hyper aggressive over minor issues, and it's just not true.
And yet, when the US develops a new weapon, a new fighter, a new bomb, a new droid, or any other military advancement and clearly plans to use it soon at war, it's praised for its technological achievement.
Not in Iran!
But when Iran develops a new construction technology, that has tens of applications, one of them, defense, then it's something we should be worried about and it makes Iran evil
Not in Iran!
So to sum up your argument.. the US is the same as Iran, which means that Iran is the same as the US. If you see that the US wants to destroy the power of Iran, obviously Iran wants to destroy the power of the US. Classic case of kill or be killed. Is that really what you are going for? That the US should strike first while it has more power?
An attack that kills thousands of people is a whole different level than typical criminal enterprise. Criminals acting from protected bases in other countries? Yeah, that's not a domestic police job.
A good example of another criminal enterprise that begs the invitation of military intervention is the Mexican drug cartels. They are simply beyond the reach of standard police. Why pretend they are not?
In our own history, we decided in the Civil War that the illegal act of secession, which was never recognized by the federal government (meaning all those southerners were still citizens..), needed the army to intervene. It's insane to suggest that the North should have just sent in a few cops to handle the problem.
Or for a more modern example, look how the National Guard is called in to assist with riots (race riots, LA riots, post-Katrina riots, etc).
Welcome to reality. When a job is too big for the police, the army is there to back them up. Happens ALL THE TIME.
I think you're a bit unhinged about this subject since you are obviously very sensitive about it. It's not my fault that, even though I explicitly was talking about the sharia law implemented in arbitration processes, you refused to believe that it could be legally enforceable. I didn't misunderstand the law, I suspect you just have no clue what you're talking about.
Also by young girl I didn't mean 5 years old, but nice try. As I've gotten older myself I realize how young 18 year olds are and how much advantage can be taken of them, especially if the system itself is used against them. Not a lot of 18 year olds have the fortitude to fight for their rights, especially when they don't know them.
It is just a made up bs bogey man sharia law story that you are probably too stupid to have even dreamt up yourself and instead just quoted it from whatever horseshit news media made it up for you.
Nice! Well here's my equally insightful rebuttal. I see that you're already brainwashed by Muslim propaganda and you're probably too stupid and blinded by political correctness to think for yourself instead of regurgitating whatever bullshit you heard from the local "liberal" mullah.
The literal translation was to wipe the nation of Israel off the map. You can interpret that in several ways. One is to believe that it means killing everyone there. This is the spin that you are reporting. The other is to realise that Iran has never accepted the legitimacy of Israel as a state and wishes to see the state of Israel eliminated as a legal entity. This is the interpretation promoted by Iran.
That is the apologist interpretation of it. It's not like this statement was plucked out of context and is the lone shining example of Iran's hostility toward Israel. Just look at their historical actions such as supporting terrorist organizations like Hezbollah with funds and weapons used to attack Israel speak to an extra-legal process of eliminating Israel. That is the proper context of the speech.
Picture the scrawny kid that hangs around with the bullies and shouts insults at other people to show how much they are a part of the group.
That's a very sympathetic portrayal. This poor scrawny kid also fights dirty and wants to kill anybody who insults him. He's a dangerous menace who tortures little animals and fantasizes about rape and murder. That's a far more accurate anthropomorphism of Iran.
That's Iran's international political status, but what about internally? They have a complex political structure, where the fundamentalist muslims are not a majority, but are influential.
Are you kidding? Didn't you read the news about their election? Khameini's buddies secured 75%+ of the seats in the election. And let's not pretend Ahmadinejad suffered because he was kowtowing to Israel or something. Iran only has pockets of non-fundamentalist Muslims, such as the youth in the cities... and if you've ever read in-depth reports about their mini-revolution a while back, they were using codes such as shouting "Allahu Akbar" from rooftops to communicate with eachother. Wow that's really reassuring for their liberal credentials. Even in the most "liberal" cities Khameini won 2/3rds of the seats.
You are dishonestly minimizing the action of the Suez Canal nationalization. It wasn't "just" nationalization, as in nothing changed but the revenue recipient. From wikipedia:
Nasser's response was the nationalization of the Suez Canal. On 26 July, in a speech in Alexandria, Nasser gave a riposte to Dulles. During his speech he deliberately pronounced the name of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the builder of the canal, a code-word for Egyptian forces to seize control of the canal and implement its nationalization.[53] He announced that the Nationalization Law had been published, that all assets of the Suez Canal Company had been frozen, and that stockholders would be paid the price of their shares according to the day's closing price on the Paris Stock Exchange.[54] That same day, Egypt closed the canal to Israeli shipping.[55] Egypt also closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, and blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba, in contravention of the Constantinople Convention of 1888. Many argued that this was also a violation of the 1949 Armistice Agreements.[56][57]
Yeah, breaking treaties and cutting off waterways to another country IS an act of war. Israel wasn't just mad that revenue was going to a new government, or transit rates were increasing.. they were being directly attacked by Egypt.
You have to remember that left-wing liberals see citizenship rules as apartheid. Look at any Western debate such as illegal Mexican immigrants in America or Muslim immigrants in European countries. If the people are there, by any means, that's good enough, and treating them differently is discrimination, racism, etc.
The problem with the Iraq invasion from the US perspective is the ridiculous humanitarian mission of "liberating" Iraqis. It should have been a simple and relatively short mission of "destroy their military capability, search for wmds" which would have been done in a year, compared to a decade.
What happened in Iraq reminds me of someone who legitimately attacks a poisonous snake, then looks at what they've done and starts moaning about how sad the poor little snake is, so better take it to the vet and pay out the nose to "fix" it.
Not to mention, if we hadn't made our goal to topple Saddam, maybe we wouldn't have had to destroy their military. People don't surrender when you back them into a corner, tell them they're going to die, and ask them to please stop fighting their own death.
Hopefully we won't make the same mistakes if it comes to military action with Iran.
I don't know any charity-run schools, but the government certainly gives money to charities in general. The Red Cross, for instance, receives grants from the government and provides services to the government for a fee. It's kind of funny, if you google "does the red cross receive federal funds" all the Red Cross pages say they receive no federal funding.. but with some minor effort you can find plenty of federal money going to the Red Cross with no expectation of being paid back. I don't know why they don't count that as funding. For instance, http://newredcrossblog.org/2010/08/27/red-cross-chapter-to-receive-100000-in-grants-to-buy-buses/
Your requirements are ridiculous! Public schools discriminate on all kinds of factors, starting with your street address. Where I live you can't pick the best public school and send your kid there, you have to choose from a short list (2 or 3 options if you're lucky) and that's it. If you get redistricted, again, you have no choice in the matter. If a private school says "We're open to people in our church" how is that any different?
Also I'm not sure why you think food is included in the price of public schools. It certainly was an extra expense for me, from elementary school through college.
private schools beat public schools *only* when you deliberately lie and compare them unfairly. Public schools cost *less* than private schools, by a good amount.
I don't know what lies you're talking about. About cost, most of the reports I've seen are unfair to *private* schools, not public. For instance, here in NC, regular public schools have two cost categories. All of the costs for infrastructure -- the building, property, etc -- are fully funded by the state's general fund, not the education fund. The "cost" of a public school is based on how much is drawn from the education fund. For private schools and even charter schools (which are funded out of the education fund), the infrastructure is included in their regular costs.
They must pay for the public education because it's a public enterprise.
There are plenty of public functions that are funded partially if not wholly on a consumption basis. For instance, state parks receive money from general public funds, but also may charge an entrance fee to defray costs. Another large chunk of their money comes from hunting and fishing licenses. Why shouldn't education funding be the same? The public can provide the bare infrastructure, but the people sending their kids to school can pay the lion's share. It's fair and just.
A voucher system for the poor addresses any concerns about being able to afford education.
Hell, the Supreme Court decided that the rights of Amish to remain ignorant due to their religious beliefs trumped the rights of their kids to get an education.
It's worse than that.. you can't just claim to be Amish (or a member of any other protected group) to receive those benefits. You also can't start your own religion that has advantages for you. It's complete bullshit on the part of our government. So much for equality.
Yes, it's that bad. American parents, if you love your children, keep them away from Religious schools: you could turn out to be lucky, but if you aren't, this is not the school's problem.
That makes no sense at all. Do you not know about the sorry state of *public* schools in America? Like you said.. you could get lucky, but if you aren't, it's not the school's problem! So how is that a warning more appropriate to religious schools? Bottom line is you need to know about your local school options and choose the one that's best and within your means. If something like a Catholic school is available, that will probably be one of the best. But even in general I doubt the average religious school is worse than the average public school.
Fuck the problem sets. They have no place in a book. Booklets of problem sets could be written and charged for every year.
That's crazy, why would you want to pay for new problem sets every year rather than have them built into the book??
Why does "13 x 8 = _____ (show your work)" have to be updated to "12 * 8 = ______ (show your work)" next year just for the sake of change??
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Wait-and-see is pretty clever. One time I found $20 at a skating rink and foolishly held it up and said "Hey did anybody lose $20". A dozen kids all said they did, so I kept it.
Why do teachers have to be the best and brightest, or even in the top 1/3? College professors, absolutely. Their students are very advanced and are looking to establish expertise themselves. But a middle school teacher or elementary school teacher? You want every 8 year old in the US to have a "science" teacher (note generic form) who has an advanced science-related degree and was in the top of their class? They don't need to be experts to answer "Ms. X why is the sky blue??" for the 100th time.
People have ridiculous expectations of teachers. Even if you increased their salary and attracted the best minds in the country, guess what, their job is teaching the same thing over and over to new kids every semester.
First of all, not many people who excelled in a challenging academic environment want to do that for their entire careers, it's not intellectually stimulating enough. You have to want to work with kids and see their unique problems, which are generally not scholarly in nature. Do you have any idea how odd it would be for a child to sit up at nights worried about the paradoxes in naive set theory? THAT would be interesting, at least the first few times. But it doesn't happen. It's stuff like "My mom and dad are getting divorced" or "I'm living with my aunt but she doesn't make me lunch and I don't have money."
And second, to be a motivational teacher (what people often mean by "good"), you yourself have to be motivated by the pleasure of seeing someone "get" something for the first time, even when it's your 100th time seeing it. The connection between that and being in the top of your class in college is non-existent, at least to me. If teaching paid $150k a year, I'd do it, but I wouldn't enjoy it. And although my qualifications would be better than many current-day teachers, I seriously doubt that I would be a better teacher in the sense that the kids I taught started loving the subject.
In conclusion, I think the best teachers are marked by their personalities, not their academic backgrounds, and I think that it's rare enough that it doesn't scale to a national education system. We should pay *some* teachers more if they are good, but the reality we have to accept is that like in any profession most will be mediocre, and that's good enough. There will always be students who fail or cannot be reached, that's just a cost of society.
Even if your numbers were right, the key there is "if the system keeps failing them." It's very rare for someone to have nothing but bad teachers for many years in a row. Pretty much everybody has a great teacher at some point, and many good teachers scattered around.
Instead, you should encourage people to enjoy learning.
That's great but how is it measured? I think it probably can be measured, but current tests don't do it.
As long as you use grades as the measure to learning, you are encouraging cheating.
If bad students cared enough about grades that they tried to cheat, they wouldn't be such bad students.
Nonsense... a good number of private schools are religious and aren't selective at all. My nephew went to one that was really cheap. It was a terrible school imho, but since he didn't make it in the advanced/honors classes in public school it ended up being a better option.
You're thinking of the $40k/year private schools. That's a tiny minority.
I'm not going to be sitting around for years looking back and thinking "Oh man I wish those doctors tried harder to save me" I'll be dead.
That's true of anything. Oh, you didn't get that heart transplant you desperately needed? Well after you're dead you won't care. A bit callous I think to dismiss people's fears like that.
Not just funeral expenses but end of life expenses. From Mayo Clinic:
Myth: My family will be charged if I donate my organs.
Fact: The organ donor's family is never charged for donating. The family is charged for the cost of all final efforts to save your life, and those costs are sometimes misinterpreted as costs related to organ donation. Costs for organ removal go to the transplant recipient.
Hey your dad died, but good news, we took all his organs and pumped them into this $20 billion/year industry, and we aren't giving you anything. Oh, except we're giving you this bill for our blatant failure to save him.
These days if you don't pay taxes you're in a key demographic for vote buying.
Just because someone else pays on your behalf doesn't mean it was free. The heart transplant surgeon isn't a volunteer worker..
Is it acceptable to let ten thousand people die from lack of organ transplants in order to avoid each one case where someone not quite brain dead is accidentally killed?
Yes, any number is acceptable since this is a matter of consent. There's no point arguing how many lives you save or that accidents don't matter because we've already established that this is an optional, lucky thing for the transplant recipient, not something to be counted on. The answer should be to make the donor form a little more thorough, and somehow ask about these accidental things. If someone says "Yes donate my organs even if there's an x% chance I will recover" then go for it.
That's some faulty logic. With so much money at stake, warlords aren't killing people to harvest organs. Poor people voluntarily do it for a small cut of the profits. The black market already exists, and the laws are keeping those black market activities alive.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/human-biology/organ-donation7.htm
The donors were recruited mostly from the slums of Brazil, flown to South Africa where the operation was performed, compensated between $6,000 to $10,000 and returned home [source: Rohter]. The South African middlemen were then able to sell the organs for as much as $100,000 [source: Handwerk].
There's absolutely NO POINT in banning compensation to the donor, because as soon as the organs are harvested, the people who have them can sell them. What do you think would change if organ donors received $500k in the US, except that the shortage of organs would fall?
There's no way you could fill the entire teaching industry with great teachers who all deserve significantly more money. There are too many spots to fill. The answer is merit based pay where some teachers earn more and others earn less.
The question is what type of success do we want to reward? For a long time the focus has been on teachers who can work with really awful students and make them slightly less awful. I suspect we'd get better results as a society from more focus on the mid to high performing students.
If you're so (pardon the term) drunk on the taste and sensation of a beer with your dinner that you're in danger of going over, maybe you can't be trusted to know the limit in the first place.
Do you have a moral problem with alcohol? Otherwise I don't understand why you hold it above everything else that might cause impairment.. like eating too much, driving while having to go to the bathroom, driving with kids in the car, driving with loud music, etc. The front line troops of the war on drunk driving are quite obviously motivated by moral issues just like the prudes who supported prohibition.
Thinking of my friends and family and the car accidents they've been in, alcohol was never involved. It was always other distractions. The most serious accident involved a friend of mine who was so focused on adjusting the radio (in a new car) that he rear ended another car at high speed. This was when he was 17 or 18. I bet you anything that there are a ton of sober 17 year olds who are more dangerous than a typical 32 year old with a BAC of 0.1.
Driving will always have an element of danger to it. Far better than focusing on harsh drunk driving laws would be encouraging defensive driving and doing things to reduce the number of drivers on the road with harder driving tests, narrower age limits (including an upper age limit), and better public transportation. Defensive driving is probably the most important of those.. twice in the past decade that I slowed almost to a stop at a green light because someone was quite obviously going to run their red light. Both of those had a decent chance of becoming a major accident if I hadn't noticed and the other person hadn't noticed at the last second either.
If your new argument is that they were already at war, then you can't claim that Israel went to war over the Suez Canal nationalization or used it as "the Israeli standard for what is considered offensive action by its neighbours." Now it's not just the seizure, but also the fact that their neighbors maintained a state of war for years, constantly antagonizing Israel while building their own strength for a future showdown, which rather destroys your point.
I'm not saying Israel doesn't share blame over the general conflict, but the example you picked was chosen to paint Israel as hyper aggressive over minor issues, and it's just not true.
And yet, when the US develops a new weapon, a new fighter, a new bomb, a new droid, or any other military advancement and clearly plans to use it soon at war, it's praised for its technological achievement.
Not in Iran!
But when Iran develops a new construction technology, that has tens of applications, one of them, defense, then it's something we should be worried about and it makes Iran evil
Not in Iran!
So to sum up your argument.. the US is the same as Iran, which means that Iran is the same as the US. If you see that the US wants to destroy the power of Iran, obviously Iran wants to destroy the power of the US. Classic case of kill or be killed. Is that really what you are going for? That the US should strike first while it has more power?
An attack that kills thousands of people is a whole different level than typical criminal enterprise. Criminals acting from protected bases in other countries? Yeah, that's not a domestic police job.
A good example of another criminal enterprise that begs the invitation of military intervention is the Mexican drug cartels. They are simply beyond the reach of standard police. Why pretend they are not?
In our own history, we decided in the Civil War that the illegal act of secession, which was never recognized by the federal government (meaning all those southerners were still citizens..), needed the army to intervene. It's insane to suggest that the North should have just sent in a few cops to handle the problem.
Or for a more modern example, look how the National Guard is called in to assist with riots (race riots, LA riots, post-Katrina riots, etc).
Welcome to reality. When a job is too big for the police, the army is there to back them up. Happens ALL THE TIME.
I think you're a bit unhinged about this subject since you are obviously very sensitive about it. It's not my fault that, even though I explicitly was talking about the sharia law implemented in arbitration processes, you refused to believe that it could be legally enforceable. I didn't misunderstand the law, I suspect you just have no clue what you're talking about.
Also by young girl I didn't mean 5 years old, but nice try. As I've gotten older myself I realize how young 18 year olds are and how much advantage can be taken of them, especially if the system itself is used against them. Not a lot of 18 year olds have the fortitude to fight for their rights, especially when they don't know them.
It is just a made up bs bogey man sharia law story that you are probably too stupid to have even dreamt up yourself and instead just quoted it from whatever horseshit news media made it up for you.
Nice! Well here's my equally insightful rebuttal. I see that you're already brainwashed by Muslim propaganda and you're probably too stupid and blinded by political correctness to think for yourself instead of regurgitating whatever bullshit you heard from the local "liberal" mullah.
The literal translation was to wipe the nation of Israel off the map. You can interpret that in several ways. One is to believe that it means killing everyone there. This is the spin that you are reporting. The other is to realise that Iran has never accepted the legitimacy of Israel as a state and wishes to see the state of Israel eliminated as a legal entity. This is the interpretation promoted by Iran.
That is the apologist interpretation of it. It's not like this statement was plucked out of context and is the lone shining example of Iran's hostility toward Israel. Just look at their historical actions such as supporting terrorist organizations like Hezbollah with funds and weapons used to attack Israel speak to an extra-legal process of eliminating Israel. That is the proper context of the speech.
Picture the scrawny kid that hangs around with the bullies and shouts insults at other people to show how much they are a part of the group.
That's a very sympathetic portrayal. This poor scrawny kid also fights dirty and wants to kill anybody who insults him. He's a dangerous menace who tortures little animals and fantasizes about rape and murder. That's a far more accurate anthropomorphism of Iran.
That's Iran's international political status, but what about internally? They have a complex political structure, where the fundamentalist muslims are not a majority, but are influential.
Are you kidding? Didn't you read the news about their election? Khameini's buddies secured 75%+ of the seats in the election. And let's not pretend Ahmadinejad suffered because he was kowtowing to Israel or something. Iran only has pockets of non-fundamentalist Muslims, such as the youth in the cities... and if you've ever read in-depth reports about their mini-revolution a while back, they were using codes such as shouting "Allahu Akbar" from rooftops to communicate with eachother. Wow that's really reassuring for their liberal credentials. Even in the most "liberal" cities Khameini won 2/3rds of the seats.
You are dishonestly minimizing the action of the Suez Canal nationalization. It wasn't "just" nationalization, as in nothing changed but the revenue recipient. From wikipedia:
Nasser's response was the nationalization of the Suez Canal. On 26 July, in a speech in Alexandria, Nasser gave a riposte to Dulles. During his speech he deliberately pronounced the name of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the builder of the canal, a code-word for Egyptian forces to seize control of the canal and implement its nationalization.[53] He announced that the Nationalization Law had been published, that all assets of the Suez Canal Company had been frozen, and that stockholders would be paid the price of their shares according to the day's closing price on the Paris Stock Exchange.[54] That same day, Egypt closed the canal to Israeli shipping.[55] Egypt also closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, and blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba, in contravention of the Constantinople Convention of 1888. Many argued that this was also a violation of the 1949 Armistice Agreements.[56][57]
Yeah, breaking treaties and cutting off waterways to another country IS an act of war. Israel wasn't just mad that revenue was going to a new government, or transit rates were increasing.. they were being directly attacked by Egypt.
You have to remember that left-wing liberals see citizenship rules as apartheid. Look at any Western debate such as illegal Mexican immigrants in America or Muslim immigrants in European countries. If the people are there, by any means, that's good enough, and treating them differently is discrimination, racism, etc.
The problem with the Iraq invasion from the US perspective is the ridiculous humanitarian mission of "liberating" Iraqis. It should have been a simple and relatively short mission of "destroy their military capability, search for wmds" which would have been done in a year, compared to a decade.
What happened in Iraq reminds me of someone who legitimately attacks a poisonous snake, then looks at what they've done and starts moaning about how sad the poor little snake is, so better take it to the vet and pay out the nose to "fix" it.
Not to mention, if we hadn't made our goal to topple Saddam, maybe we wouldn't have had to destroy their military. People don't surrender when you back them into a corner, tell them they're going to die, and ask them to please stop fighting their own death.
Hopefully we won't make the same mistakes if it comes to military action with Iran.
I don't know any charity-run schools, but the government certainly gives money to charities in general. The Red Cross, for instance, receives grants from the government and provides services to the government for a fee. It's kind of funny, if you google "does the red cross receive federal funds" all the Red Cross pages say they receive no federal funding.. but with some minor effort you can find plenty of federal money going to the Red Cross with no expectation of being paid back. I don't know why they don't count that as funding. For instance, http://newredcrossblog.org/2010/08/27/red-cross-chapter-to-receive-100000-in-grants-to-buy-buses/
Your requirements are ridiculous! Public schools discriminate on all kinds of factors, starting with your street address. Where I live you can't pick the best public school and send your kid there, you have to choose from a short list (2 or 3 options if you're lucky) and that's it. If you get redistricted, again, you have no choice in the matter. If a private school says "We're open to people in our church" how is that any different?
Also I'm not sure why you think food is included in the price of public schools. It certainly was an extra expense for me, from elementary school through college.
private schools beat public schools *only* when you deliberately lie and compare them unfairly. Public schools cost *less* than private schools, by a good amount.
I don't know what lies you're talking about. About cost, most of the reports I've seen are unfair to *private* schools, not public. For instance, here in NC, regular public schools have two cost categories. All of the costs for infrastructure -- the building, property, etc -- are fully funded by the state's general fund, not the education fund. The "cost" of a public school is based on how much is drawn from the education fund. For private schools and even charter schools (which are funded out of the education fund), the infrastructure is included in their regular costs.
They must pay for the public education because it's a public enterprise.
There are plenty of public functions that are funded partially if not wholly on a consumption basis. For instance, state parks receive money from general public funds, but also may charge an entrance fee to defray costs. Another large chunk of their money comes from hunting and fishing licenses. Why shouldn't education funding be the same? The public can provide the bare infrastructure, but the people sending their kids to school can pay the lion's share. It's fair and just.
A voucher system for the poor addresses any concerns about being able to afford education.
Hell, the Supreme Court decided that the rights of Amish to remain ignorant due to their religious beliefs trumped the rights of their kids to get an education.
It's worse than that.. you can't just claim to be Amish (or a member of any other protected group) to receive those benefits. You also can't start your own religion that has advantages for you. It's complete bullshit on the part of our government. So much for equality.
Yes, it's that bad. American parents, if you love your children, keep them away from Religious schools: you could turn out to be lucky, but if you aren't, this is not the school's problem.
That makes no sense at all. Do you not know about the sorry state of *public* schools in America? Like you said.. you could get lucky, but if you aren't, it's not the school's problem! So how is that a warning more appropriate to religious schools? Bottom line is you need to know about your local school options and choose the one that's best and within your means. If something like a Catholic school is available, that will probably be one of the best. But even in general I doubt the average religious school is worse than the average public school.
Fuck the problem sets. They have no place in a book. Booklets of problem sets could be written and charged for every year.
That's crazy, why would you want to pay for new problem sets every year rather than have them built into the book??
Why does "13 x 8 = _____ (show your work)" have to be updated to "12 * 8 = ______ (show your work)" next year just for the sake of change??