Interesting theory, and oil may indeed be a factor there currently for all I know, but oil is definitely not the driving factor behind that conflict. There's a lot more to it than that. Keep digging!
I'm currently reading a book that includes some history of the conflict in Chechnya, which apparently started when the Russians invaded about 250 years ago. Yeah, that's right - 250 years worth of conflict.
Shortly after WWII, Stalin finally got sick of the mess in Chechnya and ordered the entire population of Chechnya moved. So they loaded 400,000 people into boxcars and hauled them out to the middle of nowhere in Soviet middle Asia. He moved the whole freakin' country. Several years later, when the people were allowed to return, apparently they weren't any less pissed off, because at the next opportunity (1990 or so) they started to make their attempted break from Russian control. At some point - and the rumors are, the decision involved lots of alcohol - the Russians decided to make Chechnya see the error of its ways by force. Again. With the same results they've always gotten. You'd think they'd try some different tactics after 250 years.
The example of Chechnya should be compared and contrasted with, say, the Marshall plan. Not saying the Marshall plan would work in Chechnya, the point is, trying to change a population's mind using only applied force does not tend to work.
That's a lesson we should all be considering these days.
That seems like the smart approach, all right. My bet is that this is the direction Powell would like to go, but I'll but Cheney (-Rumsfeld-Rice) has a different, much more costly, much more stupid idea. We'll see who wins. My only hope is that Cheney and Rice have so far been invisible, and Rumsfeld marginal, while Powell has been walking like a king, so hopefully the American people would support Powell.
Absolutely right. It's painful watching President Gump stumble his way through this crisis. This morning's phone call to NY was disturbing, and the Q&A afterwards was horrifying. It's no wonder they've tried to keep his profile as low as possible. This is a man who simply does not have the right stuff. No doubt a nice guy... probably a good drinking buddy... but I just can't believe this pathetic, weaselly little fuck actually beat a real leader like McCain for the nomination.
Or Powell, for that matter. Powell's press conference this morning was spot on. Confident, articulate, intelligent, good-natured yet stern, no question about it, he is the man. I hope his visible role in the coming months increases, while Dubya stays relegated to photo ops and really short speeches without any long hard words.
I know VPs generally keep low profiles, BTW, but has anyone seen Cheney recently?
The look on his face was the exact same dumbass What Me Worry? look he ALWAYS has on his face.
Just when we need a leader... we get Dubya instead. Thanks, Republicans. Couldn't even have picked a actual breathing human being like McCain to run, couldja? I don't grok how a man without a single redeeming quality whatsoever (I'll send a dollar to anyone who can name one) got to be leader of the free world. He isn't even fun to make fun of... it's like making fun of clowns, what's the point?
I've never been more embarassed to be an American. Biggest crisis to come along in my lifetime, and we don't even have a figurehead to look to for soothing words, much less a bonafide leader.
Yeah, yeah, I know, it's flamebait and my karma could suffer, and all the Republican apologists will come crawling out from under their rocks to assault ol' Bill Clinton as a halfwitted counterpoint, but whatever. I'll vent if I feel like it.
HP Pavilion 5430 - $1350 ($1200 with rebates)
on
Which Laptop To Buy?
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· Score: 1
I just picked up an HP Pavilion 5430 for a musician friend of mine. For $1350 (plus $150 in rebates), it's got an 850 Duron, 256mb, 20 gigs, 14.1 screen, DVD, built-in modem and 10/100, and a video out jack so you can plug it into a TV. Sweet deal. Plus it looks pretty cool. We decided we hated the little clit-stick pointers on the Thinkpads and Toshibas and looked exclusively at touchpad models. This HP has a big button at the top of the touchpad so you can switch the pad off if you tend to bump it while typing - nice touch.
Another cool touch is that its front edge contains a little LCD screen and controls for the CD player, so you can play CDs on it even with the machine closed and powered off. The screen also displays battery life, and all the buttons light up green. The built in Polk speakers don't actually sound that great, but there's a headphone jack that sounds just fine. Can't imagine this is terribly useful for anyone, but it looks real keen.
So far, for $1200, I'm blown away by this thing. It comes with WinME, but on the plus side, in its defense, it didn't come loaded up with a dozen useless crappy programs running in the system tray, like the Compaqs I've bought. Overall: recommended!
See, brianvan, there's your answer... you should just go talk to DAVID KEIRSEY, and then you won't have any problems at all. DAVID KEIRSEY's got it figured out. Tell ya everything you need to know, fix ya right up, hell, fix up the whole dad-blame system, that DAVID KEIRSEY. He knows what's what. DAVID KEIRSEY. He's even written some articles. Imagine how different your life would be right now if only you'd met DAVID KEIRSEY years ago. Pffft. And you thought you had some kind of problem.
Hey, don't take my word for it, take DAVID KEIRSEY's.
So... can someone in software development explain to me how it is that buffer overflow vulnerabilities are still being found? I know dick about coding, obviously, and that's why I'm asking: wouldn't it be a standard operating procedure by this point in time to make sure that buffer overflows are handled properly? What's the deal?
I know a couple of guys who are doing it without the RIAA... but so far, just *barely* squeaking by.
Andras Jones supplements his music with acting (he's in an upcoming horror flick called The Attic Expeditions, with Seth Green and Jeffrey Combs). I know he's worked like a madman for *years* promoting his and others' music... so it's possible to be completely indie, but Internet or no, it's still a long, hard road just to get by.
That link is - http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/7/the_previous.htm l - he also has a site at www.andrasjones.com
His friend Sandman is trying to work that same road, too. Only a few songs at the mp3.com site, but if you like rap and country fused together (and who doesn't?), he's great.
What I like about these guys is they're both geeks. Andras even has a concept album about a high school dork called "Unpop" that is just awesome - great songwriting and fantastic production quality for an indie release. But as good as the album is (and I think it's as good as anything I've heard), it's probably a niche market of us geeks who'd get into it. In other words, exactly NOT the bland, homogenized masses the RIAA crowd have been chasing after.
And I think, if we're lucky, the big players won't notice until it's too late how irrelevant they've become, and we can finish forming our own new models for business. Hopefully...
My problem with Iomega is how the prices start out high and then STAY high. So, doesn't matter how good the tech is or how low-power it is, I don't think the price point is anywhere near reasonable now, and I think it'll only continue to get worse. I wouldn't be surprised if large-capacity DVD-R blanks were $3 a pop and the drives $300 just one year from now... that'll make the few owners of this Peerless drive look like morons.
And I'll take a luggable 80+ gig Firewire/USB2 hard drive for $300 over a stack of $250 20 gig proprietary media any day...
This reminds me - pretty much OT but kinda the same mindset: I went to my local gun range recently for the first time. It's a range that's used by the police during the week and is open to the public on weekends. During my introduction to the range, the rangemaster told me that they don't allow any paper targets that have silhouettes or pictures of people on them. Apparently, someone had seen the police training with these, and went to the city council and complained that the police were learning how to shoot people.
I started to say, "But..."
And the rangemaster just put up his hand - "I know, I know..."
The only kinds of targets allowed at the range now are the basic circular style.
if the power grid is available, PVs will never beat the grid.
Yeah, that's right, because as we all know R&D nevers pays off and technology never gets any better, so PVs will never beat good old-fashioned grid power, so just forget about it, OK? Just go back to sleep, America, everything's fine... those fruity renewable power enthusiasts won't make any progress here if we have anything to say about it...
That article is hilariously bad. The "hits" aren't exactly brilliant prognostication, and the "misses" are generally the result of the sort of sadly misguided chemical optimism that has brought the real world of 2000 some beautiful Superfund sites. I'm surprised he didn't predict we'd be EATING plastic. And the architectural ideas in there don't correspond with common sense or basic physical laws, not to mention good taste. I'd like to see Christopher Alexander give this guy a well-deserved beating. All told, it's barely an improvement over a Criswell prediction.
It's a great example of the kind of thinking that caused such a train wreck in postwar America - and a chilling reminder of how much worse things could've turned out if these guys had had their way. All things considered, we got off pretty lucky.
Man... it just makes me wonder, though. I'm all in favor of genetically modified foods and biotech in general, but I'm crossing my fingers and assuming that the scientists and corporations of today have grown up a little.
Sounds great. I'll just try to remember not to put my PDA in my front pocket, near my testicles.
... sorry, I have no idea what a thin-layer isotopic whatchawhosis even is, and I'm sure it's nontoxic, non-lethally radioactive, water-soluble, lowfat, organic, and comes with a touch of motherly love in every drop. And I'll buy anything that could power my Mindstorms for 30 years at a time no matter how much cancer it gives me, so hey, I'm not saying I'm against it. So what is this thing you speak of?
That click-through has become the metric of the success of online advertising is an unmitigated disaster for on-line publishing.
This post is dead-on.
I think the current handwringing over the death of the banner ad - including the essay linked to in his/. story - is histrionics. I think what we're seeing is a glut of supply (more and more websites selling adspace) coupled with the dryup of funding, leading cash-strapped sites to sell adspace cheaper and cheaper. Everyone's desperate for revenue, everyone's competing to bring home some kinda bacon, so it becomes a buyers market for banner ads. Plus, advertisers get to complain about how they "don't work." Naturally the price is going to plummet and sites are going to be in trouble.
Websites won't be able to survive by charging for content (or by donation boxes). The banner ad strategy is currently the most logical model for generating revenue. Hopefully the market will kill off the weak sites, and that combined with a more realistic set of expectations on the part of advertisers will allow banner ad revenues to creep back up to a sustainable level. I'm not an economist or an advertising guru, and I could be completely off-base about this, but that's what makes the most sense to me.
Those that can ride out the current banner ad depression but stick with it should do OK in the long run. Gimmicky irritating crap like popups and full-screen Flash ads will stay on the fringes, as these and others will continue to be widely despised experiments in form... but right now I'm betting the banner ad will mature into a responsible and productive advertising venue.
Exactly. I received a notice in the mail, looked at the terms and tossed it. Who in their right mind is going to buy more Zip stuff at this point? If they had had more decently-priced cartridges and had handled the CoD properly in the first place, I might still be using Zips every now and then... but sheesh, why bother these days?
Make assumptions all you want, but personally, most Republicans I know are poor or middle-class, not evil, and just stupid. The Democrats are poor or middle-class, misguided, ineffectual and dumb.
Politically speaking. Most all of them are quite nice people, though.
I'm not sure I have a beef with education having the lowest requirements, though. Maybe that's bad, but on the other hand, some program has to have the lowest requirements, and I'd rather it not be, say, Civil Engineering. Or CS. Those who can, do, those who can't, teach... and so what? I doubt the bell curve of bad teachers to good teachers has substantially changed shape in, oh, ever. And bad teachers are like bad cops - every profession's got bad apples, but authoritative positions like these tend to distort the relative weights, I think... e.g., you might meet 50 teachers who are perfectly acceptable, but those 2 assholes stand out way more in your mind.
But anyway, I do agree that we should be trying to attract a higher caliber of teacher. Why wouldn't we want that? Pay, benefits and prestige sound like good ways to do that to me... which brings me back to my original point, which was, the teacher's union is the only reason why teachers have as much of those things as they do now. And so far, I haven't seen anyone who hates the teacher's union propose a better system for propping up teacher's pay, benefits, and prestige (or any other method for attracting better people)... but I'd like to hear it. Really.
Fair enough about the Venn diagram. Sure, there are some wack-ass things going on in education today. I don't approve of the self-esteem building at any cost, either. Realistically, I doubt many people do. Interestingly, the worst thing happening in education today, according to my teacher friend, is the all-encompassing drive towards standardized testing. My friend reports that he has zero oppportunity to do anything creative or interesting or different in the classroom, because all of his time is rigidly scheduled to meet the demands of standardized tests. He feels like his hands are tied and there's nothing he can do about it. It's a shame because I've seen him teach outside of public school, and he's a grandmaster... he's got real potential to be a great educator, but I don't know if he'll stick with it. I can't blame him. I don't know whose fault it is, but it blows.
However, I don't have any idea what you're talking about when you suggest that people who don't like Dodgeball or Red Rover are wacked. I seem to recall those games SUCKED ASS, and taught no redeeming skills of any kind, and merely encouraged children to be violent and mean-spirited. Good fucking riddance. Not to point any fingers, but in this day and age you would have to be one sadistic bastard to want your kids playing those games... or someone who just hasn't considered it very carefully.
If I were truly qualified and felt the desire to teach, would I want to be part of a union? I say probably, yeah. Too much politics in teaching. I'd want to know that if I say something in class that Timmy's dad doesn't like, and Timmy's dad's pastor's friend sits on the school board, that I'm not going to get arbitrarily fired.
No doubt, there are negatives to being in a union, too, and unions cause bad things to happen. But the plus side is a certain level of protection against wanton tomfoolery. From my outsider's point of view, things seems pretty balanced the way they are. Realistically, there's no way schools are going to be able to pay a high enough salary to attract the best and brightest people to teaching public school. We're lucky to get what good ones turn up now, and in my experience the only way teachers get paid a halfway attractive wage as it is is due to the union.
But... it sounds like you have some kind of idea how more qualified people would be attracted to teaching if there weren't a union?
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Interesting theory, and oil may indeed be a factor there currently for all I know, but oil is definitely not the driving factor behind that conflict. There's a lot more to it than that. Keep digging!
I'm currently reading a book that includes some history of the conflict in Chechnya, which apparently started when the Russians invaded about 250 years ago. Yeah, that's right - 250 years worth of conflict.
Shortly after WWII, Stalin finally got sick of the mess in Chechnya and ordered the entire population of Chechnya moved. So they loaded 400,000 people into boxcars and hauled them out to the middle of nowhere in Soviet middle Asia. He moved the whole freakin' country. Several years later, when the people were allowed to return, apparently they weren't any less pissed off, because at the next opportunity (1990 or so) they started to make their attempted break from Russian control. At some point - and the rumors are, the decision involved lots of alcohol - the Russians decided to make Chechnya see the error of its ways by force. Again. With the same results they've always gotten. You'd think they'd try some different tactics after 250 years.
The example of Chechnya should be compared and contrasted with, say, the Marshall plan. Not saying the Marshall plan would work in Chechnya, the point is, trying to change a population's mind using only applied force does not tend to work.
That's a lesson we should all be considering these days.
That seems like the smart approach, all right. My bet is that this is the direction Powell would like to go, but I'll but Cheney (-Rumsfeld-Rice) has a different, much more costly, much more stupid idea. We'll see who wins. My only hope is that Cheney and Rice have so far been invisible, and Rumsfeld marginal, while Powell has been walking like a king, so hopefully the American people would support Powell.
If you're positively comparing Dubya to Winston Churchill... then yeah, I'd say it was just you.
Absolutely right. It's painful watching President Gump stumble his way through this crisis. This morning's phone call to NY was disturbing, and the Q&A afterwards was horrifying. It's no wonder they've tried to keep his profile as low as possible. This is a man who simply does not have the right stuff. No doubt a nice guy... probably a good drinking buddy... but I just can't believe this pathetic, weaselly little fuck actually beat a real leader like McCain for the nomination.
Or Powell, for that matter. Powell's press conference this morning was spot on. Confident, articulate, intelligent, good-natured yet stern, no question about it, he is the man. I hope his visible role in the coming months increases, while Dubya stays relegated to photo ops and really short speeches without any long hard words.
I know VPs generally keep low profiles, BTW, but has anyone seen Cheney recently?
The look on his face was the exact same dumbass What Me Worry? look he ALWAYS has on his face.
Just when we need a leader... we get Dubya instead. Thanks, Republicans. Couldn't even have picked a actual breathing human being like McCain to run, couldja? I don't grok how a man without a single redeeming quality whatsoever (I'll send a dollar to anyone who can name one) got to be leader of the free world. He isn't even fun to make fun of... it's like making fun of clowns, what's the point?
I've never been more embarassed to be an American. Biggest crisis to come along in my lifetime, and we don't even have a figurehead to look to for soothing words, much less a bonafide leader.
Yeah, yeah, I know, it's flamebait and my karma could suffer, and all the Republican apologists will come crawling out from under their rocks to assault ol' Bill Clinton as a halfwitted counterpoint, but whatever. I'll vent if I feel like it.
I just picked up an HP Pavilion 5430 for a musician friend of mine. For $1350 (plus $150 in rebates), it's got an 850 Duron, 256mb, 20 gigs, 14.1 screen, DVD, built-in modem and 10/100, and a video out jack so you can plug it into a TV. Sweet deal. Plus it looks pretty cool. We decided we hated the little clit-stick pointers on the Thinkpads and Toshibas and looked exclusively at touchpad models. This HP has a big button at the top of the touchpad so you can switch the pad off if you tend to bump it while typing - nice touch.
Another cool touch is that its front edge contains a little LCD screen and controls for the CD player, so you can play CDs on it even with the machine closed and powered off. The screen also displays battery life, and all the buttons light up green. The built in Polk speakers don't actually sound that great, but there's a headphone jack that sounds just fine. Can't imagine this is terribly useful for anyone, but it looks real keen.
So far, for $1200, I'm blown away by this thing. It comes with WinME, but on the plus side, in its defense, it didn't come loaded up with a dozen useless crappy programs running in the system tray, like the Compaqs I've bought. Overall: recommended!
See, brianvan, there's your answer... you should just go talk to DAVID KEIRSEY, and then you won't have any problems at all. DAVID KEIRSEY's got it figured out. Tell ya everything you need to know, fix ya right up, hell, fix up the whole dad-blame system, that DAVID KEIRSEY. He knows what's what. DAVID KEIRSEY. He's even written some articles. Imagine how different your life would be right now if only you'd met DAVID KEIRSEY years ago. Pffft. And you thought you had some kind of problem.
Hey, don't take my word for it, take DAVID KEIRSEY's.
He's written some articles.
So... can someone in software development explain to me how it is that buffer overflow vulnerabilities are still being found? I know dick about coding, obviously, and that's why I'm asking: wouldn't it be a standard operating procedure by this point in time to make sure that buffer overflows are handled properly? What's the deal?
I know a couple of guys who are doing it without the RIAA... but so far, just *barely* squeaking by.
m l - he also has a site at www.andrasjones.com
Andras Jones supplements his music with acting (he's in an upcoming horror flick called The Attic Expeditions, with Seth Green and Jeffrey Combs). I know he's worked like a madman for *years* promoting his and others' music... so it's possible to be completely indie, but Internet or no, it's still a long, hard road just to get by.
That link is - http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/7/the_previous.ht
His friend Sandman is trying to work that same road, too. Only a few songs at the mp3.com site, but if you like rap and country fused together (and who doesn't?), he's great.
What I like about these guys is they're both geeks. Andras even has a concept album about a high school dork called "Unpop" that is just awesome - great songwriting and fantastic production quality for an indie release. But as good as the album is (and I think it's as good as anything I've heard), it's probably a niche market of us geeks who'd get into it. In other words, exactly NOT the bland, homogenized masses the RIAA crowd have been chasing after.
And I think, if we're lucky, the big players won't notice until it's too late how irrelevant they've become, and we can finish forming our own new models for business. Hopefully...
My problem with Iomega is how the prices start out high and then STAY high. So, doesn't matter how good the tech is or how low-power it is, I don't think the price point is anywhere near reasonable now, and I think it'll only continue to get worse. I wouldn't be surprised if large-capacity DVD-R blanks were $3 a pop and the drives $300 just one year from now... that'll make the few owners of this Peerless drive look like morons.
And I'll take a luggable 80+ gig Firewire/USB2 hard drive for $300 over a stack of $250 20 gig proprietary media any day...
This reminds me - pretty much OT but kinda the same mindset: I went to my local gun range recently for the first time. It's a range that's used by the police during the week and is open to the public on weekends. During my introduction to the range, the rangemaster told me that they don't allow any paper targets that have silhouettes or pictures of people on them. Apparently, someone had seen the police training with these, and went to the city council and complained that the police were learning how to shoot people.
I started to say, "But..."
And the rangemaster just put up his hand - "I know, I know..."
The only kinds of targets allowed at the range now are the basic circular style.
True story.
You want to attribute that to Bill Hicks, please?
www.billhicks.com
Just because the man's dead doesn't mean you shouldn't give credit where credit's due.
if the power grid is available, PVs will never beat the grid.
Yeah, that's right, because as we all know R&D nevers pays off and technology never gets any better, so PVs will never beat good old-fashioned grid power, so just forget about it, OK? Just go back to sleep, America, everything's fine... those fruity renewable power enthusiasts won't make any progress here if we have anything to say about it...
That article is hilariously bad. The "hits" aren't exactly brilliant prognostication, and the "misses" are generally the result of the sort of sadly misguided chemical optimism that has brought the real world of 2000 some beautiful Superfund sites. I'm surprised he didn't predict we'd be EATING plastic. And the architectural ideas in there don't correspond with common sense or basic physical laws, not to mention good taste. I'd like to see Christopher Alexander give this guy a well-deserved beating. All told, it's barely an improvement over a Criswell prediction.
It's a great example of the kind of thinking that caused such a train wreck in postwar America - and a chilling reminder of how much worse things could've turned out if these guys had had their way. All things considered, we got off pretty lucky.
Man... it just makes me wonder, though. I'm all in favor of genetically modified foods and biotech in general, but I'm crossing my fingers and assuming that the scientists and corporations of today have grown up a little.
Stupid question...
What is a DC-DC converter? Why would one need to convert DC power to DC power? Stepping it to a different voltage, or something?
(Clearly, yes, I *am* almost entirely ignorant of electrical engineering, thank you.)
Huh. Sounds pretty cool, actually. Thanks!
Sounds great. I'll just try to remember not to put my PDA in my front pocket, near my testicles.
... sorry, I have no idea what a thin-layer isotopic whatchawhosis even is, and I'm sure it's nontoxic, non-lethally radioactive, water-soluble, lowfat, organic, and comes with a touch of motherly love in every drop. And I'll buy anything that could power my Mindstorms for 30 years at a time no matter how much cancer it gives me, so hey, I'm not saying I'm against it. So what is this thing you speak of?
That click-through has become the metric of the success of online advertising is an unmitigated disaster for on-line publishing.
/. story - is histrionics. I think what we're seeing is a glut of supply (more and more websites selling adspace) coupled with the dryup of funding, leading cash-strapped sites to sell adspace cheaper and cheaper. Everyone's desperate for revenue, everyone's competing to bring home some kinda bacon, so it becomes a buyers market for banner ads. Plus, advertisers get to complain about how they "don't work." Naturally the price is going to plummet and sites are going to be in trouble.
This post is dead-on.
I think the current handwringing over the death of the banner ad - including the essay linked to in his
Websites won't be able to survive by charging for content (or by donation boxes). The banner ad strategy is currently the most logical model for generating revenue. Hopefully the market will kill off the weak sites, and that combined with a more realistic set of expectations on the part of advertisers will allow banner ad revenues to creep back up to a sustainable level. I'm not an economist or an advertising guru, and I could be completely off-base about this, but that's what makes the most sense to me.
Those that can ride out the current banner ad depression but stick with it should do OK in the long run. Gimmicky irritating crap like popups and full-screen Flash ads will stay on the fringes, as these and others will continue to be widely despised experiments in form... but right now I'm betting the banner ad will mature into a responsible and productive advertising venue.
Exactly. I received a notice in the mail, looked at the terms and tossed it. Who in their right mind is going to buy more Zip stuff at this point? If they had had more decently-priced cartridges and had handled the CoD properly in the first place, I might still be using Zips every now and then... but sheesh, why bother these days?
Make assumptions all you want, but personally, most Republicans I know are poor or middle-class, not evil, and just stupid. The Democrats are poor or middle-class, misguided, ineffectual and dumb.
Politically speaking. Most all of them are quite nice people, though.
I'm not sure I have a beef with education having the lowest requirements, though. Maybe that's bad, but on the other hand, some program has to have the lowest requirements, and I'd rather it not be, say, Civil Engineering. Or CS. Those who can, do, those who can't, teach... and so what? I doubt the bell curve of bad teachers to good teachers has substantially changed shape in, oh, ever. And bad teachers are like bad cops - every profession's got bad apples, but authoritative positions like these tend to distort the relative weights, I think... e.g., you might meet 50 teachers who are perfectly acceptable, but those 2 assholes stand out way more in your mind.
But anyway, I do agree that we should be trying to attract a higher caliber of teacher. Why wouldn't we want that? Pay, benefits and prestige sound like good ways to do that to me... which brings me back to my original point, which was, the teacher's union is the only reason why teachers have as much of those things as they do now. And so far, I haven't seen anyone who hates the teacher's union propose a better system for propping up teacher's pay, benefits, and prestige (or any other method for attracting better people)... but I'd like to hear it. Really.
Fair enough about the Venn diagram. Sure, there are some wack-ass things going on in education today. I don't approve of the self-esteem building at any cost, either. Realistically, I doubt many people do. Interestingly, the worst thing happening in education today, according to my teacher friend, is the all-encompassing drive towards standardized testing. My friend reports that he has zero oppportunity to do anything creative or interesting or different in the classroom, because all of his time is rigidly scheduled to meet the demands of standardized tests. He feels like his hands are tied and there's nothing he can do about it. It's a shame because I've seen him teach outside of public school, and he's a grandmaster... he's got real potential to be a great educator, but I don't know if he'll stick with it. I can't blame him. I don't know whose fault it is, but it blows.
However, I don't have any idea what you're talking about when you suggest that people who don't like Dodgeball or Red Rover are wacked. I seem to recall those games SUCKED ASS, and taught no redeeming skills of any kind, and merely encouraged children to be violent and mean-spirited. Good fucking riddance. Not to point any fingers, but in this day and age you would have to be one sadistic bastard to want your kids playing those games... or someone who just hasn't considered it very carefully.
Well, that's all good for you, but how does that help us?
Who decides who's got the Gift?
Are there objective standards to define this power?
If I were truly qualified and felt the desire to teach, would I want to be part of a union? I say probably, yeah. Too much politics in teaching. I'd want to know that if I say something in class that Timmy's dad doesn't like, and Timmy's dad's pastor's friend sits on the school board, that I'm not going to get arbitrarily fired.
No doubt, there are negatives to being in a union, too, and unions cause bad things to happen. But the plus side is a certain level of protection against wanton tomfoolery. From my outsider's point of view, things seems pretty balanced the way they are. Realistically, there's no way schools are going to be able to pay a high enough salary to attract the best and brightest people to teaching public school. We're lucky to get what good ones turn up now, and in my experience the only way teachers get paid a halfway attractive wage as it is is due to the union.
But... it sounds like you have some kind of idea how more qualified people would be attracted to teaching if there weren't a union?