--ya man, I remember it was tried before but hasn't it been a coupla years now? and as the other replier commented, this was pre-microsoft strong arming the box makers. I'd say with the advances made with linux, it might be possible for one of those companies to try it again, I mean, it'sloading a disk image on a box, not a whole lot of extra work involved, one over the other near as I can see. People can't buy it/try it if it ain't there to see or if all they see for preinstalled is "one" choice.
I don't live in or near a major urban area, I very rarely go to one, so I really have no idea what's "on the shelf" for most people at the various stores that carry a lot more electronics and softwares, but in the hinterlands here, I see "one" choice on the shelf at the local one-off office supply, walmart, and ratshack. It's like the original ford, any color ya want as long as it's black. Well, ya, you'll see mostly black cars then. It's not necessary anymore.
Hey, it'll be better for ya'all windows folks anyway,get them windows apps and OS cds to drop in price with a little healthy competition, see, everyone is a winner! I actually don't want any single OS to be "dominant", we can see what happens in any industry when that happens. Besides electronic tech I like mechanical and woodworking tools, gardening equipment, alternate energy stuff and sporting goods. Dang if I want to see only "acme tool" and "united sporting", etc when I goto the store for the next must-have. Gimme them choices! Just put 'em on the shelf there, best guy wins! So far in my pooting life I've gone from dos to windows to mac classic now to linux, and who knows what it might be ten years from now? I'd hate to see anything good go down, rather just see them all get better/faster/cheaper/stronger.
WAG time-- My *guess* (based on a default that is human beings want stuff 'their way' and that's it or they ain't happy) is eventually we'll see apps created on the fly per instance of calling them up from "what's required right now to do the task", in essence tools that build tools as easy as database sets now. The OS will be created around the criteria of the user and will be mutable easily "on demand", as will be the total plug and play modularity of hardware. Hardware devices themselves will all have their own operating systems that have the ability to seamlessly talk to other pieces of hardware and cooperate in virtually any sort of config. So it might not be a classical carved in stone OS/app/hardware blend like we have now, but a "cooked to order" melange.
--man, I just don't get zdnet saying this about the apps. Tell ya, first time I installed a linux distro I was blown away by all the stuff came with it. Just sitting there medium mesmerised watching the progress seeing app after app getting installed from the cds. It's WAY more than you get from a full install from borg or artsy OS. I'm still finding "new stuff" in my last kitchen sink RH install and I'm still only using ONE of the two major sets of apps, ie, gnome and kde, so I still got more than 50% of the way to go to even play with all the jazz on here. I mean, sheesh orama what d'ya want?.
Linux just needs ONE major box shipper like dell to even offer it as an option-that's it, it'll "take" just swell. Have the same exact box, one has borg, the other has a penguin, with 100$ (whatever) cheaper price tag for the penguin, see what happens. Walmart is "cute" but it's not on the shelf, it's only on their website,and people shopping for computers on the web just ain't that likely to think of "walmart", nor is 100 buck a year lindows gonna cut it for noobs seeking a deal. At 20 or 30$ a year for a version "update" folks will goto AFTER they get it first right on their new shiny box and get to take it home and play with it. The command line is there for the 10% power users and geeks, and for 90% of the people it just ain't needed anymore, the gui works perfectly allright and there's tons of computing 'stuff' to do. Can't beat it with a stick, just need for one of them big guys to try it again in the mass produced boxes. The borg lawsuit is settled, they can "do this" now with little risk. the borg got warned off, if they try it again, they can get sued right outta their 40 billion in the bank, just needs one of those big companies to give it a whack again. The linux omellette is DONE now, you can take it outta the pan. From now on it's just "spice to taste".
--yes and no. We never had a full equal free and fair trade in the auto industry with japan. go back and revisit what the hoops where to import US cars into japan, and also check the tariff levels. also, check the laws as pertaining to ownership of real property in japan, and then the US. US people don't "own" property in japan, it's illegal. There's never been a quid pro quo.
As to whether or not this is a good thing, here's a test, actually find some US workers who havelost their non-buggywhip jobs to having them shipped overseas or replaced by 'guest workers". Stare them in the eyes, tell them you don'tcare, tell them they didn'twork hard enough or smart enough and it'sall their fault. Tell them you don'tcare if they lose their equity, or if they lose their cars, because 'oh well, it'll all sort itself out eventuallylike in the olden days". Honest, just try it, take it beyond academic posting on a forum.
I'm a blue collar guy, it's-this scam globalization deal- "hit" me several times in a row now. I will assure you once it leaves the realm of interesting academic discourse, it changes your viewpoint tremendously.And I'll agree with you, I see just as much hypocrisy in the middle classes as in any other "class'. clueless, no idea how their buying habits will effect them down the road. most people I know can tell you almost every player on their favorite "sports" team, but cannot tell you the name of their representative. Everyone is waiting for this "they" guy to "fix things", deal is, there is no "they" guy, they is us.
One person can make a difference, when they try. One of the ways I personally try is by posting on the internet, where perhaps some important information may be discussed. Not a lot but it helps. Along with all my other activism, I see it as at least an attempt, best I can do now. It's reality, I don't want to see the US reduced to second world technofeudalism, it's really that simple. The current people here can't wait 50 years for 'things to sort themselves out", if they even do then, which I doubt. My personal belief at this time is this is a controlled implosion of the US economy for a long range political agenda, but that really is another topic and is quite complex.
p.s. just an anecdotal, means absolutely nothing really, but for grins, I own a 75 chevy van, got over 300 thou miles, it don't smoke, original engine and tranny. I change my oil a lot, that's it. It's reliable enough. I also have a chevy car and a dodge framed RV, all still work just fine. girlfriend owns the jeep, that works fine too. So I guess we at least "try". I'd love to buy an all USA made computer, wouldn't bother me a bit my money went to US workers even if it cost more, deal is, can't buy one, they don't exist. Only thing I can do is every opportunity to try and not be a hypocrite, I do this to the best of my ability.
--coupla things about official and corporate statistics the past few years.
First one is, the "official" unemployment stats do NOT include people who are long term unemployed and have dropped off the unemployment insurance rolls. Just this week, on january first, 780,000-3/4 of a MILLION people, bill paying, mortgage note paying, credit card holding and paying people, people who shopped locally, spent money in stores around their neighborhoods, maybe trying to put their kids through school, etc, GONE off the stats, US workers off their last incomes, those unemployment checks which were already much smaller than their "normal" pay. But officially now, those numbers aren't totalled into the 6%. They are now the economic "dissapeareds". They are gone, not counted. And the numbers also don't include people still working but in a severely reduced pay scale job and/or at much less hours a week, the term used is the "chronically underemployed".
My best guess is, and I've seen some pundits mirror this, is that *true* unemployment in the US right now is actually almost double the official stats, call it 10% to be conservative. The US lost roughly 2 million jobs last year, that's after factoring replacement (and mostly lowerpaying) jobs, and there's a lot more coming, see the other post on the thread the lost jobs in milwaukee. And this isn't just dotcom boom years jobs, a lot of these are jobs in manufacturing that existed for generations in areas, reguylar oldsolid blue collar jobs for 'stuff" everyone still needsand wants, not buggywhips.
If you follow the news the past year, almost daily you can find layoffs or firings or whole factories relocating offshore, it's running dozens to one on "new" factory announcements. It is literally an economic hemorrahge, to revisit the balance of trade deficit point I made earlier.
One "quality of life" measurement-the basic consumer price index- had energy costs and food costs removed from the tally to make the numbers "look" better a few years ago. If one was to re-calculate this, it wouldn't look as rosy generally speaking.
Your neighbor losing his job is a recession, anyone "you" losing their job is a depression, with all the ramifications of that.
--we HAD a huge common market. No visas required to travel, a common currency, the members traded with each other, and the money "made" inside this common market remained mostly inside, thereby getting spent and respent and respent and respenty. It created the worlds largest and most successful middle class. That was called the united States. A single blue collar job could pay for a family with several kids, a home, a car or two, and that worker had a good chance of having full benefits and a retirement pension. Ain't that way no mo. It was a success. 50 soverign states that traded with each other, a slew of differing languages spoken but one language as the default business/governmental language. It was large enough to do this. Neighbor helped make neighbor prosperous. We still had foreign trade but the sheer greed and stupidity hadn't taken over as bad as it is now. It was a system that "just worked" pretty much.
But no, couldn't keep doing that, had to have that one percent of the population that was already "rich" want to be "richer".
Here's just a basic law of economics, when you move a job away from your border, and the person who loses his job loses his spendable income, that money is lost to the tune of 7 to 1 roughly. If the replacement job-if it even exists-pays less, with less bennies, then it pays less with less bennies, that person and the economy is worse off, not better..
The US corporate "model" now is just destroying the already existing middle class to create a slightly larger and extremely wealthier upper class, and a much larger bottom tier class, like the model in most second and third world countries. As long as someone still has their own personal good paying job they won't hardly care, as they are enjoying the extremely temporary cheaper prices on their goods and services. The "other guy's" predicament is just a news blurb. As soon as they become a statistic instead of a spectator to the phenomena, they "won't get it". And I am not talking about "buggywhips" being phased out, I am talking about "jobs" that are still "being done and needed and useful".
This current globalization is a complete and total scam. IF it worked as advertuised and promulgated by the governmental and 'stock market expert" shills, we wouldn't have a 500 billion a year balance of trade deficit.
The US in two and half decades has gone from the world's largest creditor nation economically to the world's largest debtor nation, the exact same time span that massive globalization has been pushed at all high governmental/corporate levels. We wouldn't have personal bankruptcies at an almost 30 year high, we wouldn't have the percentages of unemployment we have, we wouldn't have home mortgage defaults at a 30 year high.
Now anyone might call this a mere "coincidence", or series of coincidences, but I call it a long range loose plan by certain international loyal to no one uber connected rich ones/cartels/groups with both a political and economic agenda that is going to be proven to be *not nice* in the near and medium future, let alone from a long range historical view..
This is IMO and I also see nothing to dissuade me from this opinion. I look at actual tangible and verifiable results, not rhetoric and large scale hucksterism.
Globalization for the united States middle classes, the true productive people in our society and the true "wealth creators", as opposed to the "wealth re-arrangers", is pure economic vaporware, it is only a "success" for the ones controlling the agenda.
--this could be all well and good or just a troll. No way to tell, but I'll bite anyway. The last time I heard something similar was from the cable companies when they were granted all their local monopoly licenses. It was supposed to be "ad free" cable, ie, "no commercials". That lasted about two minutes, tops. And you still can't buy what you want by individual channel, it's always been a take it or leave it "package deal" that no one is ever happy with.
The default "consumer" mindset now (just accept it, it's more or less a general truism) is "we" just plain don't trust any large corporations to ever tell the truth on anything. We DO trust them to cook the books, pay high level executives obscene amounts of money for basically not a lot of "work",to do whatever it takes to avoid paying pensions or shareholders once the stock money is spent, to just constantly run businesses into the hole and declare bankruptcy and skip with the loot then start over again, lie in front of congressional committees, pay bribes to the same guys, establish and endless stream of daisy chained convulted sham/scam off shore "corporations" so they can buy,sell and lease their own stuff back and forth to each other to avoid any taxes and any personal named human responsibility, and to use lawyerese foreign language fine print on any "contracts" with end users that is so small that you need two magnifying glasses to read it.
Besides that sure, if this is true and reasonable, bring me dsl (19.2 dsl? huh?) (sdsl preferrably so I can host) out in this rural area I live in that has some sort of reasonable up stream and downstream, I'll pay double that 10$, even triple, as long as my bandwith is my bandwith,you don't block my ports, and I don't have to pay for "content" that I don't want, that is, don't force me into a "bundling" arrangement for pay per view nonsense. Don't make me pay for a phoneline I never use. Don't tell me that you only "support" one OS when I call to get a connection. Something like that, more power to ya,hope to see it. If there's a lot of "gotchas" in the fine print, ain't interested, will hold out for guerrilla/independent/home made wireless access somehow. If you have a cool breakthrough-great! Even if it starts at 19.2 but can advance within a year, swell, I'll buy it. Not that much slower than I get now on staticy rural phone lines (phone line+inet connect running over 50 clams a month now), and I'd much rather have wireless, that means my projected move to even a "more" rural area won't necessarily jeopardise my inet connection..
--I'm more concerned over home grown terrorist like robert mcnamara, henry kissinger,both the clintons, george the elder, king george the present, rumsfield, cheney, the hierarchies in the democratic national committe and the republican national committee, the membership of the council on foreign relations, the members of the tri-lateral commission, and various criminal gangs and cartels inside the various combined workgroups of the military/industrial complex who profit from war and drug smuggling in the private sector, especially banking, and the spook, law and justice "communities".
Hegelian dialectic is alive and working daily to bring a fascist reality to the US. It don't matter what label or name these gents go by, a dictatorship "system" that lies chronically, steals everything that ain't nailed down, and uses their positions for personal and secret profit are way more of a danger than anything else.
Now this viewpoint doesn't negate the possibility and probability of various other foreigners being up to "no good". I take that as a gimme as well. It's reality, there ARE foreign bad guys here and also domestic low level independent nutjobs. We got a population of around 270 million or so, law of averages comes into play. I just think it's better to have th....list to reflect more serious potential threats and dangers, to go down to slightly less serious,to less serious and so on. History has shown just over and over again that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And the history of the 20th century shows that citizens of various countries around this ole whirrled have a much higher odds-on probability of being exploited/murdered/enslaved by their own governments and "connected ones" then by "outsiders". For every person killed by a "foreign invader" in the 20th century, there's 5 to 10 killed by their own nation's power structure once they became absolute tyrants.
IMO, having watched politics and "current events/news/history" as a major interest since the late 50's/early 60's, I'd say that the US has well more than it's "fair share" of power mad dictators or dictator wannabe's,from the very highest levels to local levels, very public to very private, governmental and business, and it's official pronouncements have been full of lies and misdirections.
Just since I've been a teenager I've watched *someones* get away with whacking a president-JFK, to starting a decades long war-for-profit based on a total lie -nam war with the gulf of tonkin fairy tale, to shafting it's own vets -agent orange was a "myth" and "all in their heads", and gulf war syndrome was "in their heads", to experimenting on their own people by aerial and ground spreading of chemical, bioliogical and radiological agents-something they denied for years and finally admitted. And so forth and on and on, way too many examples to list. Heck just the federal reserve perpetual debt note scam is big enough to prove how much people get lied to and brainweashed into believing the lies.
The gestalt is-the old cliche is true, for a basic rule of thumb, when a politician's lips are moving..well, take it with several large handfuls of salt. Right now, IMO again, we are being lead down the dictatorship path with lies much more deep and sinister than minor accounting lies at enron, and those were large enough. That's chump change to what's really going on now with this "war on terrorism".
Anyone's MMV obviously, just fool me once, shame on you, fool me 4873 times, shame on me. Learn from history or repeat it, binary choice.
...it's a matter of scale. As an issue of fact-well, looks like he did it so far. As an issue of law, if he did it he certainly broke the law.
Now here's the ironic part-the same US government prosecuting him uses ECHELON and stolen promis software and a huge base of satellite intercepts, under the ocean cable taps, etc to "steal" all sortsa goodies, inclucing "industrial secrets" that I have ZERO doubt wind up in the hands of 'connected ones" to high levels of government.
But we ain't seeing any of that get "prosecuted" are we?
Coupla weeks ago, a slew of top level wall street brokerages had to pay 'fines" for insider trading-like "crimes", said fines now being paid by-investors money, other people's money. There was zero jail time involved with any of these gents-why? Easy answer there-they are solid citizen uber fatcats, so their "industrial espionage" that made them and their drinking buddies rich is "less" of a crime than this kid's.
Which is worse, which one should result in jail time? I think it's... odd... that US industrialists go to jail so rarely,despite scandal after ripoff that goes back years and results in billions transferring ownership *illegally*. They always seem to be able to skate with a fine someone else pays, like mr and mrs six pack with their friday afternoon "donations" to the 401k scam stock market.
Oh well, crime is crime, moral of this story is,for one who might have criminal intent, do it in a BIG WAY then it's called "government" or "business", then it's a lot more acceptable.
--I'm involved as a major hobby/avocation in my life with survival/preparedness issues. The internet has a wealth of information that these people can put to practical use in a "low tech" lifestyle. As pointed out in the articles, they can get better quality weather information, and seek out better markets for their produce and handicrafts. Perhaps better resources to find better seeds or better hand tools, lotsa stuff. How about plans to make home made solar cookers? And even getting an extra buck here and there from selling their stuff more efficiently means a lot to them. They can also find out better ways to get clean water, better and cheaper building techniques, they can use the net as a remote school for their children, they can find new alternative energy sources and techniques,etc,etc. Folks from those regions who are now living abroad can now maybe communicate cheaper via chat and email to the folks "back home", another plus. It's part of the need for better transportation and better communication that everyone needs-not just already "civilised" people. You can't advance as a people-at least economically- without more modern transportation and communications, it's hardly possible, and a "start" has a "beginning" to it, this looks like one of those "beginnings" to me.
All in all it's a "good thing". I'm also in favor of helping various people around the world in so called "third world" and "second world" areas make a better living for themselves at home so they are less inclined to emigrate to the US, and the good will garnered by them knowing they received a little help and notice from rank and file joe sixpack "rich americans" might help to offset this growing mistrust and hate they are developing-at least they can "see" on the net what's going on around the world and not be forced to "guess" or only know what the local fatcat exploiters tell them. If all ya got is the local warlord giving you info, "something else" might help out-maybe anyway.
What would be kinda neat is one year from now, some guy in one of these villages gets an account here and drops a story about what happened, how it helped his village, etc.
...how big are all the files combined? I am wondering if I even have space for all of them on my old coal burner here, I'd like to get all of them so I can watch it all at once, and thanks for your efforts!
..don't use rabbit ears but I have a small tower I built out back with a normal television aerial. I have no interest in small dish systems either. 50$ (whatever) a month just for television is silly, IMO, at least where I live on a mountaintop, can get a variety of over the air stations, although we watch very, very little here of it. I have a large "dish" stashed that I scrounged but no box for it yet. I *might* get a small dish system if I can't get broadband any other way sometime though, but I don't care if television comes with it, and I probably won't get it if they insist on it with additional charge. I really don't use tv for much entertainment beyond popping in a taped movie, I get the bulk of my electronic information I want off the internet.
The rural areas of the US have no "cable" tv, you use over the air or basically small dish, I'd say it's running roughly 50% or so around here people who have small dishes. I don't know what the breakdown is, but as a sort of rule of thumb, cable tv is very limited to only urban areas or very close to them, which leaves some huge land mass area in the US that doesn't have cable and probably never will. That's one of the tradeoffs for living where it's nice and unpopulated, if that's your gig. I swap deer in the yard and a large garden and the nearest neighbor close to 1/2 mile away for urban conveniences like cable and quickstores every hundred yards and hot and cold running crackheads and huge crime,loud, noisy, dirty, etc. Different strokes and stuff.
As to serving the public interest, hell ya! I can't tell ya how many complaints I've filed about the major broadcasters/networks. I think it sucks bad those goons get a rubber stamped license to print money year after decade after generation. They skew the news, propogandize to the detriment of the people in general, emphasize some truly weird stuff like taking up a full 1/3 of local alleged "news" 7 days a week with SPORTS? And the programming is more social engineering leading to absurd consumerism and political non-awareness than any sort of "good" near as I can see, with just a few exceptions. It's bread and circuses keep the population dumbed down in part. But, seems like most folks don't really care just accept it, home from work, start the beer buzz, veg. The globalist fatcats love it, keeps the billions rolling in, keeps the goons in power, double win for them.
--heh heh heh,this article is too funny, back when I was in junior high and high school, I had a couple of large books I had hollowed out for my "multitasking" err work. One contained a transistor radio (earbud and long sleeve shirts required for the human to radio 'stealth' connection), the other was hollowed out to contain "reference manuals" like doc savage books, conan, and ace doubles science fiction. And you couldn't use your slide rule in tests, either, double heh. And drafting required solid state wireless input devices called "pencils".
...sitting in front of one right now, an ibm model m. Turning it over, it says manufactured by lexmark. Nice and solid and noisy. Got them spring action goin' on doncha know. I see already there's several sources listed so good luckski! Got mine last summer at a local whiteshop, they used to let me poke through their old junk and buy hardware cheap. Got this one and a STACK of brand new old mac adb keyboards for 5$ apiece, all new in the box.
--cool site. I bookmarked it to check back on later to see the new pics. Now they need live webcams! Hmm, helmet cams so we can see where the guys are looking and what they are working on. Neat stuff!
--she's a smart lady. Reading the editorial she wrote, she's certainly not a "luddite" and her religious faith is her's, there's nothing in there that is trying to force it on anyone. I've listened to her a lot, she's pretty respectful of other's rights. And you'll also find that just plain old vanilla common sense and "decency" crosses political "party" lines. Our original Constitution was written for such a reason, to codify in "english" not lawyerese nonsense some "common sense". It's not a "republican" or "democrat" written document, either, thank goodness, if those guys tried to do it again today it would be FUBARed before they even set pen to paper.
Best advice I would have for anyone is to step away from the old paradigms of following any "party lines" rhetoric and even to cease getting sucked into the extremely limiting parameters of identifying one's self as "right" or "left" leaning and instead just differentiate "right" and "wrong". Makes things a lot easier to sort out.
I manage to catch her little two minute daily audio editorials listening to various net broadcasts carried on Genesis Communications, a pretty good collection of shows with a more traditional US constitutional (and common sense) "Independent" viewpoint as opposed to acting like most talk shows as pure propoganda arms of one or the other of the two dominant political for-profit gangs, err, I mean "partys", for example the two biggees of the "establishment" like Rush Limbeau and Larry King. I consider those shows to be more like political training wheels for people just starting to get any sort of political interest going, once you can get a balance and want to go further (which should take like one show apiece from those two gents to see it for what it is, establishment propoganda), the offerings from genesis are a lot more real and hardcore freedom-oriented, as are some of the other independent media outlets.
--well, wish I knew what I was talking about here, but I'll try anyway, perhaps someone will recognize what I'm trying for. It might even exist for all I know.
I see spam as being an email protocol problem as much as anything else. Too easy, too easy for bots to get addresses now or guess them. The spammers are like drunk drivers on their 15th DUI, lost their license long ago, but are still on the roads. the deal is, we don't really have any road control, there's no traffic cops (and don't want them thankew). So, we need "new roads" that people can use to send "electronic mail" to each other that ISN'T something in common use yet. It needs to be setup so that only people that are trusted by anyone "you" can use. It's this name@someplace.com. See that @ symbol? How about a replacement, and some sort of new way to start "electronic mail" from scratch and build trusted private networks for correspondence, and something that didn't use that @ symbol?
Yes I know this is probably naieve, don't know how to describe this better though. Is there such a critter in existence? If I was living in a floodplain, and had to constantly add to the sandbag piles to keep the water out, and it still leaked all the time, well, I'd just move someplace better. I see the email problem now to be just that, never ending war with spam, anti spam, anti anti spam, anti anti anti spam, etc. I'd rather scrap the whole email thing as it stands and start over with something "better", move OUT of the floodplain. So, I'm asking, where's the "high ground" to move to?
--I only have one walmart to look at, but they sure don't sell the 200 buck lindows or mandrake PCs here. Their boxes start at closer to 500$ and have XP on them, and the employees in the "electronics" section weren't even aware that walmart had them. In fact I got the distinct impression they don't even know what a "linux" is, I think they think linux is some program you run on "a computer" which means "an electronic machine that looks like a tv and gets ya the intarweb and says "windows and intel inside" on the front sticker. I'd like to hear if anyone has actually SEEN these linux machines on the shelf, of if they are restricted to walmart.com online store. And they also don't stock any boxed linux distros locally, again, all they have is XP.
..I am not as much convinced it's computers being used as being the problem as much as education being ignored in favor of intense and deliberate social engineering and manipulation of young people into becoming drones and serfs. "Computers as useful tools" is an easy to understand concept, but the implementation of them as has been pointed out elsewhere in the thread is more as a time waster and babysitter.
It used to be that schooling had two functions, teach basics in a wide range of subjects,the traditional 3 Rs, etc, and also to teach the ability to think as opposed to what is going on now which is in large part giving a politically correct answer and maintaining your herd and "caste" mentality status.
It is easier to command and control populations if they are ignorant and cowed and have a parroting answer that the various "commanding authorities" want to hear. People who can think for themselves are a threat to this mass two class society globalization effort.
For an overview of this I would recommend the writings of Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt. This is a paste from her bio:
"Charlotte Iserbyt is the consummate whistleblower! Iserbyt served as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, during the first Reagan Administration, where she first blew the whistle on a major technology initiative which would control curriculum in America's classrooms."
Sunday, May 13, 2001 SUNDAY Q&A Are children deliberately 'dumbed down' in school? Geoff Metcalf interviews former U.S. education adviser Charlotte Iserbyt
Editor's Note: Most parents want their children to receive a quality education. Yet, low test scores, drugs and violence on campus are increasingly prevalent in public schools and the disconnect between parents, educators and administrators is widening. Why is this situation occurring when so much time, money and attention are being directed toward improving education in the United States?
Today, WorldNetDaily staff writer and talk-show host Geoff Metcalf interviews someone who has some shocking answers, Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt. During the '80s, Iserbyt was a senior policy adviser in the U.S. Department of Education and has also written "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America," a chronological history of the past 100 years of education reform. In this interview with Metcalf, she discusses the impact of the federal government, the United Nations and influential corporations on the American educational system and a little-known program called "School-To-Work."
Metcalf's daily streaming radio show can be heard on TalkNetDaily weekdays from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern time.
Question: The first thing I have to ask you -- I'm still not sure if this is a blessing or a curse -- but ever since I returned to talk radio ten years ago, I promised myself I wouldn't interview any author until I read their book. I was intimidated when yours arrived in the mail.
Answer: I don't blame you.
Q: It is a big puppy. 714 pages worth.
A: It is a big baby.
Q: What led you to this project? You were with the Department of Education in the '80s -- why the book?
A: I actually started collecting research in the early '70s. I was on a local school board after living outside the country for 18 years for the United States Department of State. When I came back, I was very upset with the changes I had seen in our school district -- which had happened to be a pilot-school district for change. The kids were rolling around on the floor -- they didn't have to learn grammar or anything -- and I was shocked. I started asking questions and, as the only parent who ever complained, I would go to school board meetings and ask very legitimate questions like, why don't they teach grammar?
Q: How dare you ask such a silly question?
A: And, finally, a retired teacher came to me and she said, "You are right on! I want you to go for some training to become a 'change agent.' We're going to find out what is going on." So, she paid for me to go to this training. The training came out of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and was funded by what was to become my office in the U.S. Department of Education. It was funded earlier in the '70s -- and it was still funded under Ronald Reagan, by the way. This particular project was called "Innovations in Education/Change Agents Guide."
Q: So what did you learn in the training?
A: I was taught how to identify the resisters in my community. Those people who -- good people -- good Americans who have seen and know clearly these programs in the schools were not there to help our children academically.
Q: Hold on. This sounds as if instead of any modification in curriculum, the objective was to go after the people who were complaining about changes in curriculum?
A: Complaining about "values clarification" and complaining about "sex ed" and complaining about all of these subjects that have education hanging off the end of them. You know, we didn't used to have "math education" and "reading education" -- that's not really education. When you have "education" hanging off of it, you know that they have another agenda (except for "Drivers Ed"). Anyway, these were the people in our communities in the '70s who were saying, "I don't like that sex education. I don't think it is up to schools to teach my children there's no right or wrong." And saying, "I don't like that drug education and what's that critical-thinking education?"
I was trained because they didn't know who I was.
Q: Who were you?
A: I was a resister. I was actually being trained to identify myself. And I didn't like it. The other part of it was, I was trained to go to the highly-respected people in our community...
Q: Wait a minute. So, once you identified these so-called resisters, these people who were critical of people who defend the indefensible, then what do you do?
A: That's a very good question. No other talk-show host has ever asked me that. It's a good question. What do you do? You identify them and then the superintendent will try to get them onto a task force and make them have "ownership" and...
Q: Ahhh -- a re-education program?
A: Yeah -- you got it! That's a very good question -- really, truly -- I've never had a talk-show guy ask me that question.
Q: It seems like an obvious question.
A: It is a very obvious one, and that's why it took me a while to come up with an answer. But that's exactly what the reason was. And, then, the other thing I was going to do was to identify the important people in the community -- good people, good Americans who have really been used with the Rotary, Chamber of Commerce, Garden Club -- go to them and convince them that these programs are vital to the survival of this country, of the world: The world is changing we have to have these programs.
I was really shocked. I was absolutely appalled. You have to remember: I had been out of the country 18 years and I had left a country that was red, white and blue, mom and apple pie, and all that.
Q: You were a dinosaur.
A: Well, yeah! I was a dinosaur. I had lived in socialist countries and I had traveled in communist countries and I had seen a lot. And, I thought to myself: "What the [blank] is going on in my own country?"
Q: Charlotte, what about teachers? There are some good teachers who are genuinely dedicated...
A: Many. Many, many more than most people think -- and they have to keep quiet.
Q: Yeah but what is their reaction when they are presented with these controversial, non-academic methodologies that don't have anything to do with teaching anyone anything?
A: They are very unhappy, and they try to continue to do something that does have something to do with teaching and learning. I just recently heard the state of Oregon has passed legislation to get rid of tenure. I was always opposed to tenure. Now I'm in favor of tenure because what they are going to do now...
Q:... now, see, I'm opposed to tenure. Why do you support it now?
A: Because of the way they are going to use it. Now, they can get rid of the good teachers without any problem. It used to be getting rid of the bad ones right? Now, they are going to get rid of the academic teachers. The teachers who do not agree with George Bush's education agenda -- you know the outcome-based, direct education, teach-to-the-test. These poor teachers -- these poor children -- and they do not agree in the changing of the definition of quality teaching.
Q: Charlotte, I'd like you to explain to our readers at what point did it become more important to manufacture this concept of self esteem -- and the fact that if you can "feel good" about the process, it doesn't matter what the results are. When did that happen?
A: Well, you know, it all started in 1934 when the Carnegie Foundation set the agenda for the next hundred years and that was to change our country from a free, individualistic economy to a planned economy -- and to do it through the schools. And the way they would do it, would be to change the social studies so nobody would know what our form of government is -- and how precious it is -- and to not teach the Constitution. This is the Carnegie Corporation plan -- to implement a planned economy through the schools. And it is going in right now.
Q: OK, that's the background and foundation. But at what point, recently, did they effect the significant change in direction, content and product?
A: At what point did all the touchy-feeling stuff happen? Carnegie happened in 1934, the United Nations in 1945...
Q: The only touchy-feeling stuff I encountered in school was if you didn't do what you were supposed to do -- when you were supposed to do it, the way you were instructed to do it -- Brother Benilde would smack you up side the head with a book.
A: Well, that's right, but they don't want people to be educated, and this is a very important point. I know there are people out there who think: "Goodness, I thought the whole purpose of the corporations forming partnerships with the public sector (which actually is corporate fascism) was so that the schools would give our children better academic skills?" That's not true. According to David Hornbeck -- Mr. Carnegie and the big honcho for "School To Work," he said in his book, "Human Capital," which he wrote with Lester Solomon, that the corporations do not want educated people.
Q: Why?
A: Because educated people are very difficult -- they ask too many questions, they quit their jobs, etc.
Q: Actually, the way it has developed now, (and I think the primary reason they want to maintain the Department of Education) the corporations will identify what vacancies and needs they have and "train" workers. Charlotte, I want you to explain "School To Work" because I get so angry and seething when I think about it -- and try to talk about it -- that I sometimes butcher it.
A: So do I. I think the best way -- and I really recommend Congress do this, because it would be cheaper than going to Europe -- I would like all of them to go down and spend six months in Cuba. Is that a good answer?
Q: If they don't come back, it would be great.
A: Well, go down to Cuba and you will see the same system implemented there that they are implementing in Oregon, in California and in Maine and everywhere. Where the children are identified at a very early age, psychologically profiled -- fourth grade in some cases. In fact, the whole idea of work is started in kindergarten.
Q: Hold on a moment, Charlotte, because we have to stress something here.
A: What?
Q: This is not fiction. This is not something out of a Stanley Kubrick movie. This is something that is going on right now!
A: That's right. It is in. It is not vocational either -- which is something I have always supported. I'd like to share with your readers the story I sent you about the 12-year-old youngster in Minnesota. He understood what I was talking about and he said to his mom, "I want to choose my own future!" And he went to a big rally they held in Minneapolis at 12-years old. Isn't it interesting that this 12-year-old understands what "School To Work" is.
Q: And, beyond that, what about the people who don't "find" themselves until they are 40?
A: You're not kidding. I'm a bit older than that and sometimes I wonder if I've found myself... I'm still looking for myself.
Q: I often joke when people ask, "What are you going to do when you grow up?" Duh? It presupposes I will grow up and that I will know. I'm still working at it.
A: We all have a lot of talents we don't know about until later on when something happens. You are absolutely correct. The thing is that is the German dual-track system of education and work-force training. It is the Soviet system -- people don't like to use that word. It is the Cuban system.
Q: What people need to recognize is they are trying to identify kids at an early age for what their aptitudes are. Not based on what the kids talents and abilities are, but what the corporation need is.
A: That's right. Actually everything is focused on the good of the state now. It is the state that is important -- not the individual's upward mobility, the individual's future life. That's the way education used to be. You asked me earlier when the change took place.
Q: Are you going to answer it now?
A: Yes. It really took place in 1965 under Lyndon Johnson. And that followed the agreements that Eisenhower signed with the Soviet Union in 1958. I feel they very strongly influenced our agenda in education.
Q: I just dodged the bullet. I graduated in 1966.
A: You were lucky. In 1965, they couldn't get American educators to implement this agenda that the Carnegie Corporation wanted. Also, an incredible psychologist -- Brock Chisholm -- at the United Nations recommended getting rid of the conscience to the World Health Organization. And he recommended doing that through the schools by training the teachers to be little psychiatrists.
None of this was accepted by any American educator until 1965. I don't think even at that time they really accepted it but it did pass. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act was a major, major shift. It moved our marvelous system of education -- which, up until 1960, was the best in the world -- from academics, what you know in your head, to a performance-based system which we're screaming about: outcome-based education, mastery learning and Skinner (who said "I can make a pigeon a high achiever by reinforcing it on a proper schedule"). I think your readers can understand the difference between knowledge based in your head and performance based. Performance is how you perform on the job -- that is not the role of the public school system or any education system that I can see.
Q: And it changed in 1965?
A: That changed in '65. From that time on, all these incredibly horrible values-destroying programs were developed: values clarification, survival games, critical thinking. Geoff, I have a manual published in 1967 that is three inches thick of values-destroying programs. And people say, "Why Columbine?"
Q: Let me ask you this -- because I've spent a fair amount of time talking and writing about it -- the connection between the epidemic prescribing of psychotropic drugs to kids as a means of controlling them?
A: Absolutely. There's a very interesting appendix in my book about a Hawaii Master Plan in 1968. A pilot project for the whole country that was carried out in Hawaii and federally funded and it included just about everything that is taking place right now. But there was a recommendation in there to use these psychiatric drugs on our children. This has been planned for a long time. They don't want independent little active monsters running around in the classroom.
Q: There is an interesting sidebar to this. There is a woman in the San Francisco Bay area who has home schooled all her kids. Her daughter just went in the Army. The recruiters were surprised and elated that she scored remarkably high in just about every test. They gave her something like an $18,000 bonus for enlisting. They couldn't understand why she was so far superior to all the other recruits. Obviously the key reason is she was shielded and protected from public education.
A: There is no question if a parent is able to do that (and not all are -- I'm not sure I could have) they certainly should be home schooling. Or, if you can't home school, try to find a private school.
Q: But that shouldn't be necessary if the public schools had not been so corrupted.
A: It shouldn't be necessary, but we need to note that there are good public schools. Although there won't be for long because of the redefinition of academics -- and that good teaching is no longer what it used to be -- so we won't have really much of a public school system. There'll be nothing left in a few years because of the legislation that is going through Washington, D.C., right now and the way they have been crashing the public school system ever since I left my office in the Department of Education. However, right now, you have to look carefully at private schools. In many cases, they may well be worse than the public schools at the moment.
Q: So what do you suggest to concerned parents?
A: Well my recommendation is different from anybody else's because I guess I'm naive and have stars in my eyes and wear rose-colored glasses...
Q:... and you are sheltered in Maine.
A: Oh yeah... sheltered in Maine... well, I'll tell you when I moved here I thought I had moved out of the country. People don't quite understand "School To Work" here either and we are very important in "School To Work." But the only solution to this problem -- and it is a big problem because it doesn't just deal with education -- if we allow this so-called "education" system to continue, this country hasn't got a chance to hold on to its freedom.
They are taking our form of government -- Congress did this in the '90s with this legislation where they effectively changed our free system of government to a planned economy. A planned economy is not a free system at all. And if Americans think it is, they ought to go down to Cuba and take a look. In my opinion nothing short of abolishing the U.S. Department of Education will take care of this problem. And that means not back to the state level but back to the local level.
Q: Weren't the Republicans going to do that?
A: Yes, Ronald Reagan promised to do that when I was there. And I think many of us were really disappointed that this didn't happen. There is no way for us to cure the problems in American education and for this country to stay free as long as that building is allowed to exist there in partnership with the Department of Labor. It gets all of its instructions...
Q: Charlotte, I got a correspondence a couple of years back and the letterhead had both departments at the top of it.
A: That's right. They are in partnership. But, another thing is, they do not put the United Nations on top -- that is where the whole thing actually comes from. What we're putting in now -- I don't think people realize and this -- includes the school-choice proposals I'm talking about. What is going in now is international. You have the same school-choice proposals, charter schools, et cetera going into Russia. You have the Outcome-Based Education / Direct Instruction in Hong Kong. And for people to feel this is even a national program -- it is not. It is international.
I think that Benjamin Bloom is probably the behavioral psychologist who came up with the outcome-based ed and mastery learning -- he was a big U.N. guy. He died a couple of years ago. The purpose of education, as far as the United Nations is concerned, is to change the thoughts, actions and feelings of students. Bloom went on to define "good teaching"...
Q: What ever became of the concept of seeking out knowledge and information?
A: No, no -- people have to understand and it took me long time too -- when we see all these failures, we put all the money into the system and then the test scores go down, and we keep saying, "Why? Why? Get with it folks!" I finally realized about 10 years ago when I finally started putting all the stuff together, when we think it's a disaster, to them, it's a success.
Q: They are accomplishing their objective.
A: Absolutely. Because they don't care whether our children can read, write, count, et cetera -- they really don't. When they put these programs in like Outcome-Based Ed -- and we have proof of that one -- because we have the evaluation of the major outcome-based education program that went in under Reagan...
Q: What did it say?
A: The evaluation said that, no, it really didn't work, that success -- academically -- was not there. But it was successful because it turned the system on its head from inputs that we used to have to outputs. Output is performance, and it's necessary for workforce training.
Q: If the government took all the money that is whizzed down that rat hole of the U.S. Department of Education -- and didn't give it to the states -- but somehow distributed it through block grants or something to the local schools, and put the local schools in competition... I remember my wife used to brag because she went to high school in Lexington, Massachusetts, and once upon a time they had the best school system in the country...
A: Yep...
Q: Not any more... but if you allowed the local schools to compete, the quality of education would go up just through the benefits of competition.
A: I think it's true, but you are always going to have the strings attached as long as you have the federal money coming in. That's why I would like to see us just abolish the U.S. Department of Education -- in which case, all the state departments of education are going to collapse because they get up to 80% of their operating budget from my old office.
Q: Cool! That would be a good thing.
A: Wouldn't it be wonderful? And, then, we go back and restore the finest system the world has ever known. Now that to me would be even more devastating to the United Nations people -- the internationalists -- than getting out of the U.N. Because if the biggest country, the most important economic power in the world, the United States, all of a sudden decided to jump off board of the "School To Work" agenda, which is an international one, they are going to be in such trouble they will not know what to do.
Q: Therein is the problem -- selling it. What about George Bush continuing with this?
A: He wanted it all along. Bill Clinton was certainly involved in "School To Work" but it was George Bush the elder who initially put his big message into the Congressional Record. The elder Bush was big on apprenticeships and "School To Work." And, I hate to say it, but Ronald Reagan was the one who actually contributed the most to "School To Work" by implementing the concept of Public-Private Partnership. That's in the Communist Manifesto -- Industry and Government.
Q: Don't be shy or reticent. I have been telling people as long as I have had a forum, it is not a question of who is right or wrong but what is right or wrong.
A: You're right, but that is very sad. When Reagan went along with the partnership concept -- which, like I said, is in the Communist Manifesto, merge industry with the government -- then he signed the agreements with Gorbachev on education, Then, the Carnegie Corporation got involved -- and what they are giving us is the Soviet system.
Look, in my book, in 1932, you saw William Foster, chairman of the Communist Party USA write a book "Toward a Soviet America" and what he called for was a United States Department of Education, the Pavlovian method that is going in under direct instruction. He called for the scientific method. He called for the teaching of evolution. Get rid of patriotism. All of this has gone in.
Now you can't tell me that George Bush doesn't know this. He was the one who recommended keeping the U.S. Department of Education last July. When the Republicans wanted to keep in the platform to get rid of it -- to abolish the Department of Ed -- he took that out. He purposefully took that out. He knows, although he talks local. He says we're going to have local controls. How can you have local control when you have the United States Department of Education dictating every single thing to our schools right now? There is no way we have any local control left.
Q: We have heard from some people about a Japanese concept of Kai Zin. It but basically it deals with tearing down in order to build up something new.
A: That is absolutely correct. In order for them to implement the new system they have to destroy the old one. David Hornbeck is the majordomo on that. He's been in I don't know how many states. He's destroyed Kentucky, he's destroyed Philadelphia. I don't know where he is now but you have to watch him. It is so sad that parents do not see what we see because it has been so gradual and now, when you have George Bush and Ted Kennedy agreeing on George Bush's education agenda, that doesn't really leave any room for anybody to be concerned.
Q: When the allegedly rabid left and right start agreeing without compromise that in and of itself is cause for concern.
A: That's right. But where do we go? George Bush is the controlled right and Ted Kennedy is the controlled left. Control -- that is the point. And they have met at the radical center. These are the people who are supporting the communitarianism idea which if you look in the dictionary it says, "communistic form of government." Who on earth would ever dream that the Republican Party could end up with someone in the White House who is supporting a concept -- communitarianism -- that is defined in any dictionary you want, as a communistic form of government?
Q: But the dumbed-down American populous either doesn't believe you or they marginalize you as just a conspiracy theorist. Despite these people being in your face with it.
A: You're right -- the most important documents with the proof, of course, are the very old ones. Yeah, they are in your face but they are not in the faces of the average good American who has really been manipulated. It has been a very diabolical plan. They use the three-pronged fork. They use semantic deception, which are words that sound so good like "basic skills." Then they use gradualism like the frog in the cold water -- you heat it up over 50 years and the frog is dead. And then you have the dialectic where you deliberately create a problem -- and you get people to scream and go out of business -- and then you impose the solution and people are so upset at the problem that they accept anything. That's the three-pronged fork, without which we never would have been taken. Plus, the dumbing down -- because if the American people do not understand the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and that we do have a special form of government here, we are not going to know when those things are taken away from us.
Q: And those in our Congress were either intentional or manipulated co-conspirators.
A: That is exactly what has happened with the Congress when they voted for this change in our economic system to make it like Cuba -- they obviously didn't know that we had a wonderful free-enterprise system that had brought people to the shores of America for the past 150 years.
Geoff Metcalf is a talk-show host for TalkNetDaily.
..can't speak of europe, but there's a huge growing backlash against this massive legal and humongous illegal immigration into the US and outsourcing jobs, and the state of the economy as a whole. My best guess at this time is two years from now at the next presidential elections there will have occurred a major shift in peoples' consciousnesses and protectionism and serious clamp down controls and a drop of "guest workers" will occur in the US. Obviously I can't "know" this but that's why the trends are showing right now. The US actual wealth-producing productive workforce is relatively small for our population, we are hemorraghing real bona fide mortgage paying jobs now. personal bankruptices and mortgage defaults are at a 30 year high and climbing. Monday night 3/4 of a million middle class workers who have already lost their jobs will lose their last income, their unemployment checks, with roughly 50,000 a week every week after that for another few million. We AREN'T replacing those jobs nor anything close to those incomes in any close ratio. This will result eventually in some serious political re alignments, it's inevitable.
How this relates to India I guess is we'll see such pressure on the US congress that those numbers of h1b's will drop, not right away but it'll happen. If ya'all can send them other places, swell, more power to ya, and I repeat I WASN'T dissing India in my original post, just looking at macros all over. You guys are doing what ya need to do, but that don't change the fact of the 2000's being the decade of the "resource wars" as the oil and water starts to seriously run out and gets divvied up and fought over. That's why I gave it roughly a ten year furtherance predictive time span. One of the reasons is that is roughly the time I think china will make their expansionist moves, as in "big ole war" or at least such a serious bluff it will be allowed to go on.
As an aside, I think the world will be extremely lucky to not have at least one medium sized war go nuclear and biological by then, chances are high the subcontinent might be one (of several) of the places this occurs, and seeing as how that is such a wildcard in it's effects I can't really make any prognostications if that actually transpires.
yes and no, just saying "technology" will save you is incomplete. The industrialised western wealthy "world" got that way in the 19th and 20th centuries by exploiting almost free oil and water and building stuff using technological advances. Those three things are all needed, leave out any one of those three parts, you'll stay a poor nation. China is advancing technologically as well as india, the difference is they build stuff,not just talk about it or design it or trade it, they MANUFACTURE things by the cubic mile, and realising they will be needing more and more oil have picked the muslim oil producing nations to court and trade with, wheras india will forever be at war with where the oil comes from, hence, they will never achieve first world advanced wealthy status. They might achieve a much larger middle class-maybe- but won't become any sort of world power without cheap energy they own.
I am NOT dissing the Indians, just pointing out basic economies. Oil and water AND adoption of technology makes technologically superior nations, not just schooling. India has about zilch for their own energy sources, and in manufacturing they are way behind. Japan was able to suceed by having all brand new manufacturing facilities built relatively recently after world war 2 and by being extremely protectioinist and taking advantage of oil at 2 to 10$ a barrel during the boom years of the 50s through the 70s, now they are hurting and are floundering in a sea of debt with zero hopes of recovering, although they are still making stuff that is advanced and cool, lack of energy will gradually drop their power and influence once china's oil thirst grows larger and as they complete their vertical manufacturing infrastructure. I would suggest NEVER underestimate how important cheap oil has been, is, and will be in the future. India is in even worse shape. They are enjoying a temporary boom that will fizzle in around ten years or so, IMO, as programming becomes more automatic with better tools and easy for almost anyone to do, while at the same time oil increases in scarcity and price. The oil producers will want durable goods, not programs. China is the big winner this century, because they have the only logical and viable long range wealth creation plan now. You are correct about the decline of the US and Canada, we've been sold out for short term profits by our various current "leaders" in the politics/business cartel, and also by your observation of the delibarate "dumbing down" of the populations here by inferior schooling and over emphasis on trivial matters and wealth re-arranging rather than what we were the worlds best at, which was wealth-creating. We are throwing that away for short term mega profits right now, too bad, too. Canada has a chance because of their oil,gas and water wealth, but it remains to be seen if their socialistic governmental structure is up to the task or not, in my observations the jury is still out on that. If they adopted the past japanese model of protectionism and not just selling off natural resources but USING them instead they could be much wealthier, but looks to me like they got sucked into the same trap the US middle class got sucked into by their "leaders", trading real cheap trinkets for a few years for eventual loss of income.
my first thought was...
on
Waterproof Books
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· Score: 3, Interesting
.. my first thought was for "field guides" for the natural sciences. I have had a life long interest in wildcrafting and survival/preparedness issues, and durable waterproof books would be a *really good thing* for those subjects. Paper based books are too wussy and delicate for field use, and the semi-waterproof alternatives are very $pendy right now.
--I agree with the editors at popular science, the ibm product is COOL. The modular computing system-at work, it's a desktop, cruising around the core stays with you as a PDA or wearable rig, once home slide it into the laptop. This is a GREAT idea, although the price is medium sucky. I hope the concept catches on and more companies provide similar "modular computing" platforms. Reminds me-same concept-as what I got for Christmas from my girlfriend, a black and decker 12 volt cordless multitool, quite a nifty gadget, has a common battery and electric motor, but you can replace the head for a drill/driver, a jig saw or a sander. Slickness.
--does sound slick, and if the case is a normal tower, means you can buy a good case/cooling system one time and be done with it, then just upgrade components and mobo/cpu all the time when ya feel like it. I like that idea better than the liquid cooled and multi fan idea for higher end pc's that use a lot of juice and make a lot of heat. Wonder why they can't do it like the refrigerator in my camper, zero moving parts. hmmm.. anyway, too cool! Better than liquid.
Then I like the opposite, total passive-cooled low wattage rigs, take a performance hit but rugged and energy sipping.
Slashdot Mirror
--ya man, I remember it was tried before but hasn't it been a coupla years now? and as the other replier commented, this was pre-microsoft strong arming the box makers. I'd say with the advances made with linux, it might be possible for one of those companies to try it again, I mean, it'sloading a disk image on a box, not a whole lot of extra work involved, one over the other near as I can see. People can't buy it/try it if it ain't there to see or if all they see for preinstalled is "one" choice.
I don't live in or near a major urban area, I very rarely go to one, so I really have no idea what's "on the shelf" for most people at the various stores that carry a lot more electronics and softwares, but in the hinterlands here, I see "one" choice on the shelf at the local one-off office supply, walmart, and ratshack. It's like the original ford, any color ya want as long as it's black. Well, ya, you'll see mostly black cars then. It's not necessary anymore.
Hey, it'll be better for ya'all windows folks anyway,get them windows apps and OS cds to drop in price with a little healthy competition, see, everyone is a winner! I actually don't want any single OS to be "dominant", we can see what happens in any industry when that happens. Besides electronic tech I like mechanical and woodworking tools, gardening equipment, alternate energy stuff and sporting goods. Dang if I want to see only "acme tool" and "united sporting", etc when I goto the store for the next must-have. Gimme them choices! Just put 'em on the shelf there, best guy wins! So far in my pooting life I've gone from dos to windows to mac classic now to linux, and who knows what it might be ten years from now? I'd hate to see anything good go down, rather just see them all get better/faster/cheaper/stronger.
WAG time-- My *guess* (based on a default that is human beings want stuff 'their way' and that's it or they ain't happy) is eventually we'll see apps created on the fly per instance of calling them up from "what's required right now to do the task", in essence tools that build tools as easy as database sets now. The OS will be created around the criteria of the user and will be mutable easily "on demand", as will be the total plug and play modularity of hardware. Hardware devices themselves will all have their own operating systems that have the ability to seamlessly talk to other pieces of hardware and cooperate in virtually any sort of config. So it might not be a classical carved in stone OS/app/hardware blend like we have now, but a "cooked to order" melange.
--man, I just don't get zdnet saying this about the apps. Tell ya, first time I installed a linux distro I was blown away by all the stuff came with it. Just sitting there medium mesmerised watching the progress seeing app after app getting installed from the cds. It's WAY more than you get from a full install from borg or artsy OS. I'm still finding "new stuff" in my last kitchen sink RH install and I'm still only using ONE of the two major sets of apps, ie, gnome and kde, so I still got more than 50% of the way to go to even play with all the jazz on here. I mean, sheesh orama what d'ya want?.
Linux just needs ONE major box shipper like dell to even offer it as an option-that's it, it'll "take" just swell. Have the same exact box, one has borg, the other has a penguin, with 100$ (whatever) cheaper price tag for the penguin, see what happens. Walmart is "cute" but it's not on the shelf, it's only on their website,and people shopping for computers on the web just ain't that likely to think of "walmart", nor is 100 buck a year lindows gonna cut it for noobs seeking a deal. At 20 or 30$ a year for a version "update" folks will goto AFTER they get it first right on their new shiny box and get to take it home and play with it. The command line is there for the 10% power users and geeks, and for 90% of the people it just ain't needed anymore, the gui works perfectly allright and there's tons of computing 'stuff' to do. Can't beat it with a stick, just need for one of them big guys to try it again in the mass produced boxes. The borg lawsuit is settled, they can "do this" now with little risk. the borg got warned off, if they try it again, they can get sued right outta their 40 billion in the bank, just needs one of those big companies to give it a whack again. The linux omellette is DONE now, you can take it outta the pan. From now on it's just "spice to taste".
...try using the "synaptic" front end from connectiva web page or google around for some other places. Great apt4rpm front end gui tool.
--yes and no. We never had a full equal free and fair trade in the auto industry with japan. go back and revisit what the hoops where to import US cars into japan, and also check the tariff levels. also, check the laws as pertaining to ownership of real property in japan, and then the US. US people don't "own" property in japan, it's illegal. There's never been a quid pro quo.
As to whether or not this is a good thing, here's a test, actually find some US workers who havelost their non-buggywhip jobs to having them shipped overseas or replaced by 'guest workers". Stare them in the eyes, tell them you don'tcare, tell them they didn'twork hard enough or smart enough and it'sall their fault. Tell them you don'tcare if they lose their equity, or if they lose their cars, because 'oh well, it'll all sort itself out eventuallylike in the olden days". Honest, just try it, take it beyond academic posting on a forum.
I'm a blue collar guy, it's-this scam globalization deal- "hit" me several times in a row now. I will assure you once it leaves the realm of interesting academic discourse, it changes your viewpoint tremendously.And I'll agree with you, I see just as much hypocrisy in the middle classes as in any other "class'. clueless, no idea how their buying habits will effect them down the road. most people I know can tell you almost every player on their favorite "sports" team, but cannot tell you the name of their representative. Everyone is waiting for this "they" guy to "fix things", deal is, there is no "they" guy, they is us.
One person can make a difference, when they try. One of the ways I personally try is by posting on the internet, where perhaps some important information may be discussed. Not a lot but it helps. Along with all my other activism, I see it as at least an attempt, best I can do now. It's reality, I don't want to see the US reduced to second world technofeudalism, it's really that simple. The current people here can't wait 50 years for 'things to sort themselves out", if they even do then, which I doubt. My personal belief at this time is this is a controlled implosion of the US economy for a long range political agenda, but that really is another topic and is quite complex.
p.s. just an anecdotal, means absolutely nothing really, but for grins, I own a 75 chevy van, got over 300 thou miles, it don't smoke, original engine and tranny. I change my oil a lot, that's it. It's reliable enough. I also have a chevy car and a dodge framed RV, all still work just fine. girlfriend owns the jeep, that works fine too. So I guess we at least "try". I'd love to buy an all USA made computer, wouldn't bother me a bit my money went to US workers even if it cost more, deal is, can't buy one, they don't exist. Only thing I can do is every opportunity to try and not be a hypocrite, I do this to the best of my ability.
--coupla things about official and corporate statistics the past few years.
First one is, the "official" unemployment stats do NOT include people who are long term unemployed and have dropped off the unemployment insurance rolls. Just this week, on january first, 780,000-3/4 of a MILLION people, bill paying, mortgage note paying, credit card holding and paying people, people who shopped locally, spent money in stores around their neighborhoods, maybe trying to put their kids through school, etc, GONE off the stats, US workers off their last incomes, those unemployment checks which were already much smaller than their "normal" pay. But officially now, those numbers aren't totalled into the 6%. They are now the economic "dissapeareds". They are gone, not counted. And the numbers also don't include people still working but in a severely reduced pay scale job and/or at much less hours a week, the term used is the "chronically underemployed".
My best guess is, and I've seen some pundits mirror this, is that *true* unemployment in the US right now is actually almost double the official stats, call it 10% to be conservative. The US lost roughly 2 million jobs last year, that's after factoring replacement (and mostly lowerpaying) jobs, and there's a lot more coming, see the other post on the thread the lost jobs in milwaukee. And this isn't just dotcom boom years jobs, a lot of these are jobs in manufacturing that existed for generations in areas, reguylar oldsolid blue collar jobs for 'stuff" everyone still needsand wants, not buggywhips.
If you follow the news the past year, almost daily you can find layoffs or firings or whole factories relocating offshore, it's running dozens to one on "new" factory announcements. It is literally an economic hemorrahge, to revisit the balance of trade deficit point I made earlier.
One "quality of life" measurement-the basic consumer price index- had energy costs and food costs removed from the tally to make the numbers "look" better a few years ago. If one was to re-calculate this, it wouldn't look as rosy generally speaking.
Your neighbor losing his job is a recession, anyone "you" losing their job is a depression, with all the ramifications of that.
--we HAD a huge common market. No visas required to travel, a common currency, the members traded with each other, and the money "made" inside this common market remained mostly inside, thereby getting spent and respent and respent and respenty. It created the worlds largest and most successful middle class. That was called the united States. A single blue collar job could pay for a family with several kids, a home, a car or two, and that worker had a good chance of having full benefits and a retirement pension. Ain't that way no mo. It was a success. 50 soverign states that traded with each other, a slew of differing languages spoken but one language as the default business/governmental language. It was large enough to do this. Neighbor helped make neighbor prosperous. We still had foreign trade but the sheer greed and stupidity hadn't taken over as bad as it is now. It was a system that "just worked" pretty much.
But no, couldn't keep doing that, had to have that one percent of the population that was already "rich" want to be "richer".
Here's just a basic law of economics, when you move a job away from your border, and the person who loses his job loses his spendable income, that money is lost to the tune of 7 to 1 roughly. If the replacement job-if it even exists-pays less, with less bennies, then it pays less with less bennies, that person and the economy is worse off, not better..
The US corporate "model" now is just destroying the already existing middle class to create a slightly larger and extremely wealthier upper class, and a much larger bottom tier class, like the model in most second and third world countries. As long as someone still has their own personal good paying job they won't hardly care, as they are enjoying the extremely temporary cheaper prices on their goods and services. The "other guy's" predicament is just a news blurb. As soon as they become a statistic instead of a spectator to the phenomena, they "won't get it". And I am not talking about "buggywhips" being phased out, I am talking about "jobs" that are still "being done and needed and useful".
This current globalization is a complete and total scam. IF it worked as advertuised and promulgated by the governmental and 'stock market expert" shills, we wouldn't have a 500 billion a year balance of trade deficit.
The US in two and half decades has gone from the world's largest creditor nation economically to the world's largest debtor nation, the exact same time span that massive globalization has been pushed at all high governmental/corporate levels. We wouldn't have personal bankruptcies at an almost 30 year high, we wouldn't have the percentages of unemployment we have, we wouldn't have home mortgage defaults at a 30 year high.
Now anyone might call this a mere "coincidence", or series of coincidences, but I call it a long range loose plan by certain international loyal to no one uber connected rich ones/cartels/groups with both a political and economic agenda that is going to be proven to be *not nice* in the near and medium future, let alone from a long range historical view..
This is IMO and I also see nothing to dissuade me from this opinion. I look at actual tangible and verifiable results, not rhetoric and large scale hucksterism.
Globalization for the united States middle classes, the true productive people in our society and the true "wealth creators", as opposed to the "wealth re-arrangers", is pure economic vaporware, it is only a "success" for the ones controlling the agenda.
--this could be all well and good or just a troll. No way to tell, but I'll bite anyway. The last time I heard something similar was from the cable companies when they were granted all their local monopoly licenses. It was supposed to be "ad free" cable, ie, "no commercials". That lasted about two minutes, tops. And you still can't buy what you want by individual channel, it's always been a take it or leave it "package deal" that no one is ever happy with.
The default "consumer" mindset now (just accept it, it's more or less a general truism) is "we" just plain don't trust any large corporations to ever tell the truth on anything. We DO trust them to cook the books, pay high level executives obscene amounts of money for basically not a lot of "work",to do whatever it takes to avoid paying pensions or shareholders once the stock money is spent, to just constantly run businesses into the hole and declare bankruptcy and skip with the loot then start over again, lie in front of congressional committees, pay bribes to the same guys, establish and endless stream of daisy chained convulted sham/scam off shore "corporations" so they can buy,sell and lease their own stuff back and forth to each other to avoid any taxes and any personal named human responsibility, and to use lawyerese foreign language fine print on any "contracts" with end users that is so small that you need two magnifying glasses to read it.
Besides that sure, if this is true and reasonable, bring me dsl (19.2 dsl? huh?) (sdsl preferrably so I can host) out in this rural area I live in that has some sort of reasonable up stream and downstream, I'll pay double that 10$, even triple, as long as my bandwith is my bandwith,you don't block my ports, and I don't have to pay for "content" that I don't want, that is, don't force me into a "bundling" arrangement for pay per view nonsense. Don't make me pay for a phoneline I never use. Don't tell me that you only "support" one OS when I call to get a connection. Something like that, more power to ya,hope to see it. If there's a lot of "gotchas" in the fine print, ain't interested, will hold out for guerrilla/independent/home made wireless access somehow. If you have a cool breakthrough-great! Even if it starts at 19.2 but can advance within a year, swell, I'll buy it. Not that much slower than I get now on staticy rural phone lines (phone line+inet connect running over 50 clams a month now), and I'd much rather have wireless, that means my projected move to even a "more" rural area won't necessarily jeopardise my inet connection..
--I'm more concerned over home grown terrorist like robert mcnamara, henry kissinger,both the clintons, george the elder, king george the present, rumsfield, cheney, the hierarchies in the democratic national committe and the republican national committee, the membership of the council on foreign relations, the members of the tri-lateral commission, and various criminal gangs and cartels inside the various combined workgroups of the military/industrial complex who profit from war and drug smuggling in the private sector, especially banking, and the spook, law and justice "communities".
..list to reflect more serious potential threats and dangers, to go down to slightly less serious,to less serious and so on. History has shown just over and over again that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And the history of the 20th century shows that citizens of various countries around this ole whirrled have a much higher odds-on probability of being exploited/murdered/enslaved by their own governments and "connected ones" then by "outsiders". For every person killed by a "foreign invader" in the 20th century, there's 5 to 10 killed by their own nation's power structure once they became absolute tyrants.
Hegelian dialectic is alive and working daily to bring a fascist reality to the US. It don't matter what label or name these gents go by, a dictatorship "system" that lies chronically, steals everything that ain't nailed down, and uses their positions for personal and secret profit are way more of a danger than anything else.
Now this viewpoint doesn't negate the possibility and probability of various other foreigners being up to "no good". I take that as a gimme as well. It's reality, there ARE foreign bad guys here and also domestic low level independent nutjobs. We got a population of around 270 million or so, law of averages comes into play. I just think it's better to have th..
IMO, having watched politics and "current events/news/history" as a major interest since the late 50's/early 60's, I'd say that the US has well more than it's "fair share" of power mad dictators or dictator wannabe's,from the very highest levels to local levels, very public to very private, governmental and business, and it's official pronouncements have been full of lies and misdirections.
Just since I've been a teenager I've watched *someones* get away with whacking a president-JFK, to starting a decades long war-for-profit based on a total lie -nam war with the gulf of tonkin fairy tale, to shafting it's own vets -agent orange was a "myth" and "all in their heads", and gulf war syndrome was "in their heads", to experimenting on their own people by aerial and ground spreading of chemical, bioliogical and radiological agents-something they denied for years and finally admitted. And so forth and on and on, way too many examples to list. Heck just the federal reserve perpetual debt note scam is big enough to prove how much people get lied to and brainweashed into believing the lies.
The gestalt is-the old cliche is true, for a basic rule of thumb, when a politician's lips are moving..well, take it with several large handfuls of salt. Right now, IMO again, we are being lead down the dictatorship path with lies much more deep and sinister than minor accounting lies at enron, and those were large enough. That's chump change to what's really going on now with this "war on terrorism".
Anyone's MMV obviously, just fool me once, shame on you, fool me 4873 times, shame on me. Learn from history or repeat it, binary choice.
...it's a matter of scale. As an issue of fact-well, looks like he did it so far. As an issue of law, if he did it he certainly broke the law.
... odd... that US industrialists go to jail so rarely,despite scandal after ripoff that goes back years and results in billions transferring ownership *illegally*. They always seem to be able to skate with a fine someone else pays, like mr and mrs six pack with their friday afternoon "donations" to the 401k scam stock market.
Now here's the ironic part-the same US government prosecuting him uses ECHELON and stolen promis software and a huge base of satellite intercepts, under the ocean cable taps, etc to "steal" all sortsa goodies, inclucing "industrial secrets" that I have ZERO doubt wind up in the hands of 'connected ones" to high levels of government.
But we ain't seeing any of that get "prosecuted" are we?
Coupla weeks ago, a slew of top level wall street brokerages had to pay 'fines" for insider trading-like "crimes", said fines now being paid by-investors money, other people's money. There was zero jail time involved with any of these gents-why? Easy answer there-they are solid citizen uber fatcats, so their "industrial espionage" that made them and their drinking buddies rich is "less" of a crime than this kid's.
Which is worse, which one should result in jail time? I think it's
Oh well, crime is crime, moral of this story is,for one who might have criminal intent, do it in a BIG WAY then it's called "government" or "business", then it's a lot more acceptable.
--I'm involved as a major hobby/avocation in my life with survival/preparedness issues. The internet has a wealth of information that these people can put to practical use in a "low tech" lifestyle. As pointed out in the articles, they can get better quality weather information, and seek out better markets for their produce and handicrafts. Perhaps better resources to find better seeds or better hand tools, lotsa stuff. How about plans to make home made solar cookers? And even getting an extra buck here and there from selling their stuff more efficiently means a lot to them. They can also find out better ways to get clean water, better and cheaper building techniques, they can use the net as a remote school for their children, they can find new alternative energy sources and techniques,etc,etc. Folks from those regions who are now living abroad can now maybe communicate cheaper via chat and email to the folks "back home", another plus. It's part of the need for better transportation and better communication that everyone needs-not just already "civilised" people. You can't advance as a people-at least economically- without more modern transportation and communications, it's hardly possible, and a "start" has a "beginning" to it, this looks like one of those "beginnings" to me.
All in all it's a "good thing". I'm also in favor of helping various people around the world in so called "third world" and "second world" areas make a better living for themselves at home so they are less inclined to emigrate to the US, and the good will garnered by them knowing they received a little help and notice from rank and file joe sixpack "rich americans" might help to offset this growing mistrust and hate they are developing-at least they can "see" on the net what's going on around the world and not be forced to "guess" or only know what the local fatcat exploiters tell them. If all ya got is the local warlord giving you info, "something else" might help out-maybe anyway.
What would be kinda neat is one year from now, some guy in one of these villages gets an account here and drops a story about what happened, how it helped his village, etc.
...how big are all the files combined? I am wondering if I even have space for all of them on my old coal burner here, I'd like to get all of them so I can watch it all at once, and thanks for your efforts!
..don't use rabbit ears but I have a small tower I built out back with a normal television aerial. I have no interest in small dish systems either. 50$ (whatever) a month just for television is silly, IMO, at least where I live on a mountaintop, can get a variety of over the air stations, although we watch very, very little here of it. I have a large "dish" stashed that I scrounged but no box for it yet. I *might* get a small dish system if I can't get broadband any other way sometime though, but I don't care if television comes with it, and I probably won't get it if they insist on it with additional charge. I really don't use tv for much entertainment beyond popping in a taped movie, I get the bulk of my electronic information I want off the internet.
The rural areas of the US have no "cable" tv, you use over the air or basically small dish, I'd say it's running roughly 50% or so around here people who have small dishes. I don't know what the breakdown is, but as a sort of rule of thumb, cable tv is very limited to only urban areas or very close to them, which leaves some huge land mass area in the US that doesn't have cable and probably never will. That's one of the tradeoffs for living where it's nice and unpopulated, if that's your gig. I swap deer in the yard and a large garden and the nearest neighbor close to 1/2 mile away for urban conveniences like cable and quickstores every hundred yards and hot and cold running crackheads and huge crime,loud, noisy, dirty, etc. Different strokes and stuff.
As to serving the public interest, hell ya! I can't tell ya how many complaints I've filed about the major broadcasters/networks. I think it sucks bad those goons get a rubber stamped license to print money year after decade after generation. They skew the news, propogandize to the detriment of the people in general, emphasize some truly weird stuff like taking up a full 1/3 of local alleged "news" 7 days a week with SPORTS? And the programming is more social engineering leading to absurd consumerism and political non-awareness than any sort of "good" near as I can see, with just a few exceptions. It's bread and circuses keep the population dumbed down in part. But, seems like most folks don't really care just accept it, home from work, start the beer buzz, veg. The globalist fatcats love it, keeps the billions rolling in, keeps the goons in power, double win for them.
--heh heh heh,this article is too funny, back when I was in junior high and high school, I had a couple of large books I had hollowed out for my "multitasking" err work. One contained a transistor radio (earbud and long sleeve shirts required for the human to radio 'stealth' connection), the other was hollowed out to contain "reference manuals" like doc savage books, conan, and ace doubles science fiction. And you couldn't use your slide rule in tests, either, double heh. And drafting required solid state wireless input devices called "pencils".
--nice mod! retro-practical! hey, liked the halloween pics too, "casseroles" heh heh heh
...sitting in front of one right now, an ibm model m. Turning it over, it says manufactured by lexmark. Nice and solid and noisy. Got them spring action goin' on doncha know. I see already there's several sources listed so good luckski! Got mine last summer at a local whiteshop, they used to let me poke through their old junk and buy hardware cheap. Got this one and a STACK of brand new old mac adb keyboards for 5$ apiece, all new in the box.
--cool site. I bookmarked it to check back on later to see the new pics. Now they need live webcams! Hmm, helmet cams so we can see where the guys are looking and what they are working on. Neat stuff!
Best advice I would have for anyone is to step away from the old paradigms of following any "party lines" rhetoric and even to cease getting sucked into the extremely limiting parameters of identifying one's self as "right" or "left" leaning and instead just differentiate "right" and "wrong". Makes things a lot easier to sort out.
I manage to catch her little two minute daily audio editorials listening to various net broadcasts carried on Genesis Communications, a pretty good collection of shows with a more traditional US constitutional (and common sense) "Independent" viewpoint as opposed to acting like most talk shows as pure propoganda arms of one or the other of the two dominant political for-profit gangs, err, I mean "partys", for example the two biggees of the "establishment" like Rush Limbeau and Larry King. I consider those shows to be more like political training wheels for people just starting to get any sort of political interest going, once you can get a balance and want to go further (which should take like one show apiece from those two gents to see it for what it is, establishment propoganda), the offerings from genesis are a lot more real and hardcore freedom-oriented, as are some of the other independent media outlets.
FWIW, here is Mrs. Schalfly's website, Eagle Forum.
--well, wish I knew what I was talking about here, but I'll try anyway, perhaps someone will recognize what I'm trying for. It might even exist for all I know.
I see spam as being an email protocol problem as much as anything else. Too easy, too easy for bots to get addresses now or guess them. The spammers are like drunk drivers on their 15th DUI, lost their license long ago, but are still on the roads. the deal is, we don't really have any road control, there's no traffic cops (and don't want them thankew). So, we need "new roads" that people can use to send "electronic mail" to each other that ISN'T something in common use yet. It needs to be setup so that only people that are trusted by anyone "you" can use. It's this name@someplace.com. See that @ symbol? How about a replacement, and some sort of new way to start "electronic mail" from scratch and build trusted private networks for correspondence, and something that didn't use that @ symbol?
Yes I know this is probably naieve, don't know how to describe this better though. Is there such a critter in existence? If I was living in a floodplain, and had to constantly add to the sandbag piles to keep the water out, and it still leaked all the time, well, I'd just move someplace better. I see the email problem now to be just that, never ending war with spam, anti spam, anti anti spam, anti anti anti spam, etc. I'd rather scrap the whole email thing as it stands and start over with something "better", move OUT of the floodplain. So, I'm asking, where's the "high ground" to move to?
--I only have one walmart to look at, but they sure don't sell the 200 buck lindows or mandrake PCs here. Their boxes start at closer to 500$ and have XP on them, and the employees in the "electronics" section weren't even aware that walmart had them. In fact I got the distinct impression they don't even know what a "linux" is, I think they think linux is some program you run on "a computer" which means "an electronic machine that looks like a tv and gets ya the intarweb and says "windows and intel inside" on the front sticker. I'd like to hear if anyone has actually SEEN these linux machines on the shelf, of if they are restricted to walmart.com online store. And they also don't stock any boxed linux distros locally, again, all they have is XP.
It used to be that schooling had two functions, teach basics in a wide range of subjects,the traditional 3 Rs, etc, and also to teach the ability to think as opposed to what is going on now which is in large part giving a politically correct answer and maintaining your herd and "caste" mentality status.
It is easier to command and control populations if they are ignorant and cowed and have a parroting answer that the various "commanding authorities" want to hear. People who can think for themselves are a threat to this mass two class society globalization effort.
For an overview of this I would recommend the writings of Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt. This is a paste from her bio:
"Charlotte Iserbyt is the consummate whistleblower! Iserbyt served as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, during the first Reagan Administration, where she first blew the whistle on a major technology initiative which would control curriculum in America's classrooms."
It's a rather disturbing revelation.
Here is an interview with the author.
Sunday, May 13, 2001
SUNDAY Q&A
Are children deliberately 'dumbed down' in school?
Geoff Metcalf interviews former U.S. education adviser Charlotte Iserbyt
Editor's Note: Most parents want their children to receive a quality education. Yet, low test scores, drugs and violence on campus are increasingly prevalent in public schools and the disconnect between parents, educators and administrators is widening. Why is this situation occurring when so much time, money and attention are being directed toward improving education in the United States?
Today, WorldNetDaily staff writer and talk-show host Geoff Metcalf interviews someone who has some shocking answers, Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt. During the '80s, Iserbyt was a senior policy adviser in the U.S. Department of Education and has also written "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America," a chronological history of the past 100 years of education reform. In this interview with Metcalf, she discusses the impact of the federal government, the United Nations and influential corporations on the American educational system and a little-known program called "School-To-Work."
Metcalf's daily streaming radio show can be heard on TalkNetDaily weekdays from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern time.
By Geoff Metcalf
© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
Question: The first thing I have to ask you -- I'm still not sure if this is a blessing or a curse -- but ever since I returned to talk radio ten years ago, I promised myself I wouldn't interview any author until I read their book. I was intimidated when yours arrived in the mail.
Answer: I don't blame you.
Q: It is a big puppy. 714 pages worth.
A: It is a big baby.
Q: What led you to this project? You were with the Department of Education in the '80s -- why the book?
A: I actually started collecting research in the early '70s. I was on a local school board after living outside the country for 18 years for the United States Department of State. When I came back, I was very upset with the changes I had seen in our school district -- which had happened to be a pilot-school district for change. The kids were rolling around on the floor -- they didn't have to learn grammar or anything -- and I was shocked. I started asking questions and, as the only parent who ever complained, I would go to school board meetings and ask very legitimate questions like, why don't they teach grammar?
Q: How dare you ask such a silly question?
A: And, finally, a retired teacher came to me and she said, "You are right on! I want you to go for some training to become a 'change agent.' We're going to find out what is going on." So, she paid for me to go to this training. The training came out of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and was funded by what was to become my office in the U.S. Department of Education. It was funded earlier in the '70s -- and it was still funded under Ronald Reagan, by the way. This particular project was called "Innovations in Education/Change Agents Guide."
Q: So what did you learn in the training?
A: I was taught how to identify the resisters in my community. Those people who -- good people -- good Americans who have seen and know clearly these programs in the schools were not there to help our children academically.
Q: Hold on. This sounds as if instead of any modification in curriculum, the objective was to go after the people who were complaining about changes in curriculum?
A: Complaining about "values clarification" and complaining about "sex ed" and complaining about all of these subjects that have education hanging off the end of them. You know, we didn't used to have "math education" and "reading education" -- that's not really education. When you have "education" hanging off of it, you know that they have another agenda (except for "Drivers Ed"). Anyway, these were the people in our communities in the '70s who were saying, "I don't like that sex education. I don't think it is up to schools to teach my children there's no right or wrong." And saying, "I don't like that drug education and what's that critical-thinking education?"
I was trained because they didn't know who I was.
Q: Who were you?
A: I was a resister. I was actually being trained to identify myself. And I didn't like it. The other part of it was, I was trained to go to the highly-respected people in our community
Q: Wait a minute. So, once you identified these so-called resisters, these people who were critical of people who defend the indefensible, then what do you do?
A: That's a very good question. No other talk-show host has ever asked me that. It's a good question. What do you do? You identify them and then the superintendent will try to get them onto a task force and make them have "ownership" and
Q: Ahhh -- a re-education program?
A: Yeah -- you got it! That's a very good question -- really, truly -- I've never had a talk-show guy ask me that question.
Q: It seems like an obvious question.
A: It is a very obvious one, and that's why it took me a while to come up with an answer. But that's exactly what the reason was. And, then, the other thing I was going to do was to identify the important people in the community -- good people, good Americans who have really been used with the Rotary, Chamber of Commerce, Garden Club -- go to them and convince them that these programs are vital to the survival of this country, of the world: The world is changing we have to have these programs.
I was really shocked. I was absolutely appalled. You have to remember: I had been out of the country 18 years and I had left a country that was red, white and blue, mom and apple pie, and all that.
Q: You were a dinosaur.
A: Well, yeah! I was a dinosaur. I had lived in socialist countries and I had traveled in communist countries and I had seen a lot. And, I thought to myself: "What the [blank] is going on in my own country?"
Q: Charlotte, what about teachers? There are some good teachers who are genuinely dedicated
A: Many. Many, many more than most people think -- and they have to keep quiet.
Q: Yeah but what is their reaction when they are presented with these controversial, non-academic methodologies that don't have anything to do with teaching anyone anything?
A: They are very unhappy, and they try to continue to do something that does have something to do with teaching and learning. I just recently heard the state of Oregon has passed legislation to get rid of tenure. I was always opposed to tenure. Now I'm in favor of tenure because what they are going to do now
Q:
A: Because of the way they are going to use it. Now, they can get rid of the good teachers without any problem. It used to be getting rid of the bad ones right? Now, they are going to get rid of the academic teachers. The teachers who do not agree with George Bush's education agenda -- you know the outcome-based, direct education, teach-to-the-test. These poor teachers -- these poor children -- and they do not agree in the changing of the definition of quality teaching.
Q: Charlotte, I'd like you to explain to our readers at what point did it become more important to manufacture this concept of self esteem -- and the fact that if you can "feel good" about the process, it doesn't matter what the results are. When did that happen?
A: Well, you know, it all started in 1934 when the Carnegie Foundation set the agenda for the next hundred years and that was to change our country from a free, individualistic economy to a planned economy -- and to do it through the schools. And the way they would do it, would be to change the social studies so nobody would know what our form of government is -- and how precious it is -- and to not teach the Constitution. This is the Carnegie Corporation plan -- to implement a planned economy through the schools. And it is going in right now.
Q: OK, that's the background and foundation. But at what point, recently, did they effect the significant change in direction, content and product?
A: At what point did all the touchy-feeling stuff happen? Carnegie happened in 1934, the United Nations in 1945
Q: The only touchy-feeling stuff I encountered in school was if you didn't do what you were supposed to do -- when you were supposed to do it, the way you were instructed to do it -- Brother Benilde would smack you up side the head with a book.
A: Well, that's right, but they don't want people to be educated, and this is a very important point. I know there are people out there who think: "Goodness, I thought the whole purpose of the corporations forming partnerships with the public sector (which actually is corporate fascism) was so that the schools would give our children better academic skills?" That's not true. According to David Hornbeck -- Mr. Carnegie and the big honcho for "School To Work," he said in his book, "Human Capital," which he wrote with Lester Solomon, that the corporations do not want educated people.
Q: Why?
A: Because educated people are very difficult -- they ask too many questions, they quit their jobs, etc.
Q: Actually, the way it has developed now, (and I think the primary reason they want to maintain the Department of Education) the corporations will identify what vacancies and needs they have and "train" workers. Charlotte, I want you to explain "School To Work" because I get so angry and seething when I think about it -- and try to talk about it -- that I sometimes butcher it.
A: So do I. I think the best way -- and I really recommend Congress do this, because it would be cheaper than going to Europe -- I would like all of them to go down and spend six months in Cuba. Is that a good answer?
Q: If they don't come back, it would be great.
A: Well, go down to Cuba and you will see the same system implemented there that they are implementing in Oregon, in California and in Maine and everywhere. Where the children are identified at a very early age, psychologically profiled -- fourth grade in some cases. In fact, the whole idea of work is started in kindergarten.
Q: Hold on a moment, Charlotte, because we have to stress something here.
A: What?
Q: This is not fiction. This is not something out of a Stanley Kubrick movie. This is something that is going on right now!
A: That's right. It is in. It is not vocational either -- which is something I have always supported. I'd like to share with your readers the story I sent you about the 12-year-old youngster in Minnesota. He understood what I was talking about and he said to his mom, "I want to choose my own future!" And he went to a big rally they held in Minneapolis at 12-years old. Isn't it interesting that this 12-year-old understands what "School To Work" is.
Q: And, beyond that, what about the people who don't "find" themselves until they are 40?
A: You're not kidding. I'm a bit older than that and sometimes I wonder if I've found myself
Q: I often joke when people ask, "What are you going to do when you grow up?" Duh? It presupposes I will grow up and that I will know. I'm still working at it.
A: We all have a lot of talents we don't know about until later on when something happens. You are absolutely correct. The thing is that is the German dual-track system of education and work-force training. It is the Soviet system -- people don't like to use that word. It is the Cuban system.
Q: What people need to recognize is they are trying to identify kids at an early age for what their aptitudes are. Not based on what the kids talents and abilities are, but what the corporation need is.
A: That's right. Actually everything is focused on the good of the state now. It is the state that is important -- not the individual's upward mobility, the individual's future life. That's the way education used to be. You asked me earlier when the change took place.
Q: Are you going to answer it now?
A: Yes. It really took place in 1965 under Lyndon Johnson. And that followed the agreements that Eisenhower signed with the Soviet Union in 1958. I feel they very strongly influenced our agenda in education.
Q: I just dodged the bullet. I graduated in 1966.
A: You were lucky. In 1965, they couldn't get American educators to implement this agenda that the Carnegie Corporation wanted. Also, an incredible psychologist -- Brock Chisholm -- at the United Nations recommended getting rid of the conscience to the World Health Organization. And he recommended doing that through the schools by training the teachers to be little psychiatrists.
None of this was accepted by any American educator until 1965. I don't think even at that time they really accepted it but it did pass. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act was a major, major shift. It moved our marvelous system of education -- which, up until 1960, was the best in the world -- from academics, what you know in your head, to a performance-based system which we're screaming about: outcome-based education, mastery learning and Skinner (who said "I can make a pigeon a high achiever by reinforcing it on a proper schedule"). I think your readers can understand the difference between knowledge based in your head and performance based. Performance is how you perform on the job -- that is not the role of the public school system or any education system that I can see.
Q: And it changed in 1965?
A: That changed in '65. From that time on, all these incredibly horrible values-destroying programs were developed: values clarification, survival games, critical thinking. Geoff, I have a manual published in 1967 that is three inches thick of values-destroying programs. And people say, "Why Columbine?"
Q: Let me ask you this -- because I've spent a fair amount of time talking and writing about it -- the connection between the epidemic prescribing of psychotropic drugs to kids as a means of controlling them?
A: Absolutely. There's a very interesting appendix in my book about a Hawaii Master Plan in 1968. A pilot project for the whole country that was carried out in Hawaii and federally funded and it included just about everything that is taking place right now. But there was a recommendation in there to use these psychiatric drugs on our children. This has been planned for a long time. They don't want independent little active monsters running around in the classroom.
Q: There is an interesting sidebar to this. There is a woman in the San Francisco Bay area who has home schooled all her kids. Her daughter just went in the Army. The recruiters were surprised and elated that she scored remarkably high in just about every test. They gave her something like an $18,000 bonus for enlisting. They couldn't understand why she was so far superior to all the other recruits. Obviously the key reason is she was shielded and protected from public education.
A: There is no question if a parent is able to do that (and not all are -- I'm not sure I could have) they certainly should be home schooling. Or, if you can't home school, try to find a private school.
Q: But that shouldn't be necessary if the public schools had not been so corrupted.
A: It shouldn't be necessary, but we need to note that there are good public schools. Although there won't be for long because of the redefinition of academics -- and that good teaching is no longer what it used to be -- so we won't have really much of a public school system. There'll be nothing left in a few years because of the legislation that is going through Washington, D.C., right now and the way they have been crashing the public school system ever since I left my office in the Department of Education. However, right now, you have to look carefully at private schools. In many cases, they may well be worse than the public schools at the moment.
Q: So what do you suggest to concerned parents?
A: Well my recommendation is different from anybody else's because I guess I'm naive and have stars in my eyes and wear rose-colored glasses
Q:
A: Oh yeah
They are taking our form of government -- Congress did this in the '90s with this legislation where they effectively changed our free system of government to a planned economy. A planned economy is not a free system at all. And if Americans think it is, they ought to go down to Cuba and take a look. In my opinion nothing short of abolishing the U.S. Department of Education will take care of this problem. And that means not back to the state level but back to the local level.
Q: Weren't the Republicans going to do that?
A: Yes, Ronald Reagan promised to do that when I was there. And I think many of us were really disappointed that this didn't happen. There is no way for us to cure the problems in American education and for this country to stay free as long as that building is allowed to exist there in partnership with the Department of Labor. It gets all of its instructions
Q: Charlotte, I got a correspondence a couple of years back and the letterhead had both departments at the top of it.
A: That's right. They are in partnership. But, another thing is, they do not put the United Nations on top -- that is where the whole thing actually comes from. What we're putting in now -- I don't think people realize and this -- includes the school-choice proposals I'm talking about. What is going in now is international. You have the same school-choice proposals, charter schools, et cetera going into Russia. You have the Outcome-Based Education / Direct Instruction in Hong Kong. And for people to feel this is even a national program -- it is not. It is international.
I think that Benjamin Bloom is probably the behavioral psychologist who came up with the outcome-based ed and mastery learning -- he was a big U.N. guy. He died a couple of years ago. The purpose of education, as far as the United Nations is concerned, is to change the thoughts, actions and feelings of students. Bloom went on to define "good teaching"
Q: What ever became of the concept of seeking out knowledge and information?
A: No, no -- people have to understand and it took me long time too -- when we see all these failures, we put all the money into the system and then the test scores go down, and we keep saying, "Why? Why? Get with it folks!" I finally realized about 10 years ago when I finally started putting all the stuff together, when we think it's a disaster, to them, it's a success.
Q: They are accomplishing their objective.
A: Absolutely. Because they don't care whether our children can read, write, count, et cetera -- they really don't. When they put these programs in like Outcome-Based Ed -- and we have proof of that one -- because we have the evaluation of the major outcome-based education program that went in under Reagan
Q: What did it say?
A: The evaluation said that, no, it really didn't work, that success -- academically -- was not there. But it was successful because it turned the system on its head from inputs that we used to have to outputs. Output is performance, and it's necessary for workforce training.
Q: If the government took all the money that is whizzed down that rat hole of the U.S. Department of Education -- and didn't give it to the states -- but somehow distributed it through block grants or something to the local schools, and put the local schools in competition
A: Yep
Q: Not any more
A: I think it's true, but you are always going to have the strings attached as long as you have the federal money coming in. That's why I would like to see us just abolish the U.S. Department of Education -- in which case, all the state departments of education are going to collapse because they get up to 80% of their operating budget from my old office.
Q: Cool! That would be a good thing.
A: Wouldn't it be wonderful? And, then, we go back and restore the finest system the world has ever known. Now that to me would be even more devastating to the United Nations people -- the internationalists -- than getting out of the U.N. Because if the biggest country, the most important economic power in the world, the United States, all of a sudden decided to jump off board of the "School To Work" agenda, which is an international one, they are going to be in such trouble they will not know what to do.
Q: Therein is the problem -- selling it. What about George Bush continuing with this?
A: He wanted it all along. Bill Clinton was certainly involved in "School To Work" but it was George Bush the elder who initially put his big message into the Congressional Record. The elder Bush was big on apprenticeships and "School To Work." And, I hate to say it, but Ronald Reagan was the one who actually contributed the most to "School To Work" by implementing the concept of Public-Private Partnership. That's in the Communist Manifesto -- Industry and Government.
Q: Don't be shy or reticent. I have been telling people as long as I have had a forum, it is not a question of who is right or wrong but what is right or wrong.
A: You're right, but that is very sad. When Reagan went along with the partnership concept -- which, like I said, is in the Communist Manifesto, merge industry with the government -- then he signed the agreements with Gorbachev on education, Then, the Carnegie Corporation got involved -- and what they are giving us is the Soviet system.
Look, in my book, in 1932, you saw William Foster, chairman of the Communist Party USA write a book "Toward a Soviet America" and what he called for was a United States Department of Education, the Pavlovian method that is going in under direct instruction. He called for the scientific method. He called for the teaching of evolution. Get rid of patriotism. All of this has gone in.
Now you can't tell me that George Bush doesn't know this. He was the one who recommended keeping the U.S. Department of Education last July. When the Republicans wanted to keep in the platform to get rid of it -- to abolish the Department of Ed -- he took that out. He purposefully took that out. He knows, although he talks local. He says we're going to have local controls. How can you have local control when you have the United States Department of Education dictating every single thing to our schools right now? There is no way we have any local control left.
Q: We have heard from some people about a Japanese concept of Kai Zin. It but basically it deals with tearing down in order to build up something new.
A: That is absolutely correct. In order for them to implement the new system they have to destroy the old one. David Hornbeck is the majordomo on that. He's been in I don't know how many states. He's destroyed Kentucky, he's destroyed Philadelphia. I don't know where he is now but you have to watch him. It is so sad that parents do not see what we see because it has been so gradual and now, when you have George Bush and Ted Kennedy agreeing on George Bush's education agenda, that doesn't really leave any room for anybody to be concerned.
Q: When the allegedly rabid left and right start agreeing without compromise that in and of itself is cause for concern.
A: That's right. But where do we go? George Bush is the controlled right and Ted Kennedy is the controlled left. Control -- that is the point. And they have met at the radical center. These are the people who are supporting the communitarianism idea which if you look in the dictionary it says, "communistic form of government." Who on earth would ever dream that the Republican Party could end up with someone in the White House who is supporting a concept -- communitarianism -- that is defined in any dictionary you want, as a communistic form of government?
Q: But the dumbed-down American populous either doesn't believe you or they marginalize you as just a conspiracy theorist. Despite these people being in your face with it.
A: You're right -- the most important documents with the proof, of course, are the very old ones. Yeah, they are in your face but they are not in the faces of the average good American who has really been manipulated. It has been a very diabolical plan. They use the three-pronged fork. They use semantic deception, which are words that sound so good like "basic skills." Then they use gradualism like the frog in the cold water -- you heat it up over 50 years and the frog is dead. And then you have the dialectic where you deliberately create a problem -- and you get people to scream and go out of business -- and then you impose the solution and people are so upset at the problem that they accept anything. That's the three-pronged fork, without which we never would have been taken. Plus, the dumbing down -- because if the American people do not understand the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and that we do have a special form of government here, we are not going to know when those things are taken away from us.
Q: And those in our Congress were either intentional or manipulated co-conspirators.
A: That is exactly what has happened with the Congress when they voted for this change in our economic system to make it like Cuba -- they obviously didn't know that we had a wonderful free-enterprise system that had brought people to the shores of America for the past 150 years.
Geoff Metcalf is a talk-show host for TalkNetDaily.
..can't speak of europe, but there's a huge growing backlash against this massive legal and humongous illegal immigration into the US and outsourcing jobs, and the state of the economy as a whole. My best guess at this time is two years from now at the next presidential elections there will have occurred a major shift in peoples' consciousnesses and protectionism and serious clamp down controls and a drop of "guest workers" will occur in the US. Obviously I can't "know" this but that's why the trends are showing right now. The US actual wealth-producing productive workforce is relatively small for our population, we are hemorraghing real bona fide mortgage paying jobs now. personal bankruptices and mortgage defaults are at a 30 year high and climbing. Monday night 3/4 of a million middle class workers who have already lost their jobs will lose their last income, their unemployment checks, with roughly 50,000 a week every week after that for another few million. We AREN'T replacing those jobs nor anything close to those incomes in any close ratio. This will result eventually in some serious political re alignments, it's inevitable.
How this relates to India I guess is we'll see such pressure on the US congress that those numbers of h1b's will drop, not right away but it'll happen. If ya'all can send them other places, swell, more power to ya, and I repeat I WASN'T dissing India in my original post, just looking at macros all over. You guys are doing what ya need to do, but that don't change the fact of the 2000's being the decade of the "resource wars" as the oil and water starts to seriously run out and gets divvied up and fought over. That's why I gave it roughly a ten year furtherance predictive time span. One of the reasons is that is roughly the time I think china will make their expansionist moves, as in "big ole war" or at least such a serious bluff it will be allowed to go on.
As an aside, I think the world will be extremely lucky to not have at least one medium sized war go nuclear and biological by then, chances are high the subcontinent might be one (of several) of the places this occurs, and seeing as how that is such a wildcard in it's effects I can't really make any prognostications if that actually transpires.
yes and no, just saying "technology" will save you is incomplete. The industrialised western wealthy "world" got that way in the 19th and 20th centuries by exploiting almost free oil and water and building stuff using technological advances. Those three things are all needed, leave out any one of those three parts, you'll stay a poor nation. China is advancing technologically as well as india, the difference is they build stuff,not just talk about it or design it or trade it, they MANUFACTURE things by the cubic mile, and realising they will be needing more and more oil have picked the muslim oil producing nations to court and trade with, wheras india will forever be at war with where the oil comes from, hence, they will never achieve first world advanced wealthy status. They might achieve a much larger middle class-maybe- but won't become any sort of world power without cheap energy they own.
I am NOT dissing the Indians, just pointing out basic economies. Oil and water AND adoption of technology makes technologically superior nations, not just schooling. India has about zilch for their own energy sources, and in manufacturing they are way behind. Japan was able to suceed by having all brand new manufacturing facilities built relatively recently after world war 2 and by being extremely protectioinist and taking advantage of oil at 2 to 10$ a barrel during the boom years of the 50s through the 70s, now they are hurting and are floundering in a sea of debt with zero hopes of recovering, although they are still making stuff that is advanced and cool, lack of energy will gradually drop their power and influence once china's oil thirst grows larger and as they complete their vertical manufacturing infrastructure. I would suggest NEVER underestimate how important cheap oil has been, is, and will be in the future. India is in even worse shape. They are enjoying a temporary boom that will fizzle in around ten years or so, IMO, as programming becomes more automatic with better tools and easy for almost anyone to do, while at the same time oil increases in scarcity and price. The oil producers will want durable goods, not programs. China is the big winner this century, because they have the only logical and viable long range wealth creation plan now. You are correct about the decline of the US and Canada, we've been sold out for short term profits by our various current "leaders" in the politics/business cartel, and also by your observation of the delibarate "dumbing down" of the populations here by inferior schooling and over emphasis on trivial matters and wealth re-arranging rather than what we were the worlds best at, which was wealth-creating. We are throwing that away for short term mega profits right now, too bad, too. Canada has a chance because of their oil,gas and water wealth, but it remains to be seen if their socialistic governmental structure is up to the task or not, in my observations the jury is still out on that. If they adopted the past japanese model of protectionism and not just selling off natural resources but USING them instead they could be much wealthier, but looks to me like they got sucked into the same trap the US middle class got sucked into by their "leaders", trading real cheap trinkets for a few years for eventual loss of income.
.. my first thought was for "field guides" for the natural sciences. I have had a life long interest in wildcrafting and survival/preparedness issues, and durable waterproof books would be a *really good thing* for those subjects. Paper based books are too wussy and delicate for field use, and the semi-waterproof alternatives are very $pendy right now.
--I agree with the editors at popular science, the ibm product is COOL. The modular computing system-at work, it's a desktop, cruising around the core stays with you as a PDA or wearable rig, once home slide it into the laptop. This is a GREAT idea, although the price is medium sucky. I hope the concept catches on and more companies provide similar "modular computing" platforms. Reminds me-same concept-as what I got for Christmas from my girlfriend, a black and decker 12 volt cordless multitool, quite a nifty gadget, has a common battery and electric motor, but you can replace the head for a drill/driver, a jig saw or a sander. Slickness.
--does sound slick, and if the case is a normal tower, means you can buy a good case/cooling system one time and be done with it, then just upgrade components and mobo/cpu all the time when ya feel like it. I like that idea better than the liquid cooled and multi fan idea for higher end pc's that use a lot of juice and make a lot of heat. Wonder why they can't do it like the refrigerator in my camper, zero moving parts. hmmm.. anyway, too cool! Better than liquid.
Then I like the opposite, total passive-cooled low wattage rigs, take a performance hit but rugged and energy sipping.