Your point about the student with the connected daddy is well taken. It's the same all over -- just take the sons and daughters of school board members and administrators for example. I worked in a school where the darling child of a school board member snuck out of her hotel room while on a class trip to Spain to go drinking on the beach at midnight. (This was a 16 year old, mind you.)
The teacher ended up coming under fire for not "supervising" the child properly; the child got a slap on the wrist.
I used to joke about the whole thing. What was the teacher supposed to do to better supervise the child, climb into bed with her? Teachers get in trouble for that, too!;-)
And you're right in your second point, too. Any bureaucracy is always more interested in giving the appearance of satisfying at least the law's minimum than effecting the nominal goal of the institution (in this case: actually teaching children).
(Here's a self-test: Do you still have any of your school books or notes? When was the last time you reviewed the parts of it that you don't use day-to-day? Did you study it without intending to keep it?)
Ninety percent of them, selling back or throwing out only what I thought was absolute garbage.
Your comment rings true, but I think the public school culture squelches the young's desire to learn; and I believe that this is one of the points Gatto's book makes.
While few private schools produce worse students than the worst public schools, no private schools produce better students than the best public schools.
Even if that is technically true, the best students from the "best" public schools are a statistical anomaly, having far more to do with the student than the school, and certainly having to do with the vastly bigger number of students in the public school population compared to the private school population.
I will whole heartedly agree with you though that schools (public schools, in my opinion) try to scale bigger than they should. It always amuses me to see a school district of 30 thousand with high schools over 3 thousand students in size talk about the teaching the value of "community." The kids in these schools exist largely in anonimity and are in no way a part of any meaningful school community.
It's a system designed to keep young people out of the work force [...] , to keep them in debt and create a class of permanent woker/paupers with the illusion of being 'educated'.
I agree. It used to be the draft that kept the young out of the work force; now it is just as you say. The "subjects" people learn in college are laughable, and people graduate knowing, in most cases, nothing.
College has become largely vocational, and students learn things that would be better learned on the job. The entire economy and society have been distorted however by so-called "higher education" and the student loans that make them "affordable." Apart from the few who go into the construction or home repair industry, auto mechanics, and so forth, most people would eventually find themselves at a disadvantage if they did not have that piece of paper, leading them to a roadblock in their career no matter how intelligent and capable they are.
Nevertheless, most people are indeed at a disadvantage, having either placed themselves in debt or having spent their parents' money on college rather than having that money or credit on hand to apply at some significant juncture in their lives towards some business endeavor -- say, after working 5 or 10 years in some line of work for someone else, they then strike out on their own at some opportune moment.
Higher education (and its friends in the banking industry) has turned into a giant money-making scam on the clueless (which turns out to be most of us). The public school system of the United States serves as a giant marketing tool for this "educational-financial complex," promoting college as the sine qua non for success.
I'm sympathetic to what you're saying, but I think this is the real principle behind your school's success (and other schools like it): the school culture explicitly promoted learning and education as a value.
This is the fundamental difference between such schools and public schooling, no matter what school board members, teachers, administrators, and teacher college PhD's say to the contrary. Learning and education is not valued in the public school culture.
In non-government schools, kids are there first and foremost because their parents care enough about education to spare the money for it. Moreover, every student's place in that school is conditional: fuck up, and you're out!
There are good teachers, good students, and good books in both government and non-government schools. The fundamental difference (that makes all the difference) is the above. Promote the value of education, and the work is half done.
This will not happen in American public schools, except for rare exceptions. Government schools in America cater to discipline problem students, half-idiot students, and every half-baked educational fad that comes out of the ivory tower. Apart from the good students, good teachers, and good ideas that happen to make it in through the doors, the public schools are a dumping ground.
For what it's worth, I went through graduate school, earning an M.A. in education and currently substitute teach in several districts. I'm familiar with what goes on.
I'm all for catching Osama and killing him, but I don't kid myself that there will be any kind of "trial" -- even if they assemble a room full of guys in black robes carrying gavels and so forth. Any trial would be a show trial.
The US -- apart from whatever pretense -- isn't after Osama "the criminal." The US is after Osama the a-national combattant. No laws apply to him but the laws of the jungle.
We found that most people don't end up raising or lowering [the iMac G4 screen]. The big thing is the tilt direction...
Maybe those of us who don't fall into the "most people" category will miss the range of motion available on the iMac G4. I own one now. Occasionally I like to tilt my chair back and slump down. To match that posture, I move the iMac screen down, too. At other times I'm just tired of sitting. I then stand and raise the screen all the way up, tilting it all the way back. I can surf the 'Net comfortably for a little while this way. It's a nice change of pace.
I think the G5 iMac is a great machine, but I'll miss the screen mobility when I get one.
Everybody here is no doubt familiar with the "unofficial standard" that is Microsoft Word: meaning, they have been sent Word documents or asked to send documents in Word format as if everybody used Word. Microsoft has ensured that the clueless masses default to Word's format as an Internet standard (or as an example of "best practices" -- to use the latest buzzword).
You can find examples of this in business, education, and government.
It's possible that we're going to see e-mail "evolve" in the same way. Ninety percent of e-mail flying around the Internet will use the new Sender ID standard; those not using it will seem odd and likely be forced to use it more often than not in their various business dealings.
[R]esearch [...] determined that for all types of tasks, subjects lost time when they had to switch from one task to another.
I agree with you that the above observation is not new. Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations commented on the very same phenomenon. In fact, his observation appears in the very first chapter of the book:
A man commonly saunters a little in turning his hand from one sort of employment to another. When he first begins the new work he is seldom very keen and hearty; his mind, as they say, does not go to it, and for some time he rather trifles than applies to good purpose.[Emphasis mine.]
This observation no doubt appears even earlier in literature. I just happened to recall reading it in Smith.
What I've heard (whether true or not) is that Kerry wouldn't dare take the Swift Boat Veterans to court. Doing that would mean he would have to release his records from Viet Nam.
If I have the story straight, he is the only one that can authorize having the records released. Supposedly, these records corroborate the lack of faith Kerry's superiors had in him, which is in part what the SBV allege.
"I've asked him. He won't let me do one." These are the sad words of Steven Spielberg regarding his requests to direct Star Wars being turned down. For years, the director has begged George Lucas for a shot.
"I wanted to do one 15 years ago, and he didn'twant me to do it. I understand why - Star Wars is George's baby." He mentioned he's still very interested in helming a story that takes place in a galaxy, far, far away.
The above quote can be found here. It can also be found at this page hosted by the BBC.
There is also another quote by Spielberg on Lucas which I remember but cannot locate. Spielberg said something about Lucas's editing skills to the effect of: "I would allow George carte blanche to edit any one of my movies." It's a compliment to his editing skills, but sort of a left handed compliment when you think what that might imply about the rest of Lucas's movie making skills.
Wait until the "baby boomers" reach old age and start to collect on their social security, government pensions, Medicare, et cetera. This is the most well to do generation in American history, and either the largest or second largest (if the number of their kids exceeds their numbers) as well. When they retire, they are going to use their votes -- guided by their unequalled sense of entitlement -- to suck the country dry.
Obviously the security people at airports are trained and no doubt encouraged by a litany of inflexible rules and consequences for those that don't follow them to the letter to simply "go by the book." What we wind up with is the mindless application of bureaucratic procedures by security drones. You couldn't convince me that we are all safer because of this.
It's not that politicians should receive special treatment; but it is ridiculous that one of the most recognizable men in American politics gets flagged by the computer and no one can do anything about it because no one dare stick his neck out for fear of being "flagged" for termination from his job.
On second thought though, with all the bullshit the average person has to put up with in every aspect of life that involves dealing with government agencies and their rules -- at least some of which I'm sure Senator Kennedy is responsible for -- I say hooray for inconveniencing the senator! Let's have more of this!
Your "test" doesn't test anything. No one ever says that those with ADD are incapable of concentrating. In fact one authority has said he believes the ADD tag is misleading: the condition should really be termed something more like "inconsistent attention disorder."
People with ADD simply cannot bring themselves to do the boring, monotonous, things that "normal" people can: things like, filling out paperwork in triplicate, keeping the garage regularly in order, or completing 50 more or less identical math problems for homework, when they understand the concept after the first three.
I'm sure to the above you'll just answer that these people are lazy or lack discipline -- whatever. The other answer could just as easily be that the drones of the world simply construct meaningless work -- from bureaucratic forms, to front lawns that need regular mowing -- just to fill up otherwise ordinary lives and make themselves feel they're accomplishing something of worth, and that non-drone minority finds itself oftentimes lost in this inane world.
Many creative and productive -- though certainly unconventional and maybe even eccentric -- people fit the bill for ADD. Sadly, the curriculum in public school works to undermine the confidence and intellectual growth of those that don't fit in.
I've noticed a phenomenon, too, that I call "geek chest beating." To picture it, think of gorillas trying to intimidate one another by standing tall and beating their chests. Geeks (male geeks) do the same sort of thing.
Everytime one geek jumps down the others throat because the first forgot a semicolon in a piece of code he posted during an online discussion ("Your code doesn't even compile, dunce!"), or because the first called Windows XP an operating system ("An operating system is technically only the code that deals directly with the underlying hardware!!!") -- that's geek chest beating.
You see examples of this in other professions, where men jump down one another's throats to correct trivial inaccuracies in an attempt to prove that they are in fact the alpha of the group. If someone where to claim that it is at its worst in computer fields, I wouldn't dispute the claim.
What woman in her right mind would put up with that kind of crap?
Maybe the start of this thread expresses the suspicion that plenty of kids are prescribed Ritalin even though they may not have ADD. Lots of people suspect that.
I don't doubt there is such a thing as ADD; neither do I doubt, however, that there is such a thing as disinterested parents that would just as soon feed their kid a pill than spend time finding out what the real problem is, or if there is in fact a real problem.
You are absolutely right. This infringement on free speech is so wrong it hurts. Political speech is exactly what the first amendment is about -- far more than some dude's "right" to walk around his college campus naked.
Free speech is dying a rapid death here in America, and when its death is finally here, all bets are off.
I think everybody here has heard of 1984, but maybe the AC is 16 or 17 and just got done reading it for school, or maybe he thinks that a lot of the people reading Slashdot are young and haven't read it or thought to read it. In any case, cut him some slack -- if only out of generosity.
As it so happens, my girlfriend is suffering from a mild case of shingles. I am aware that the virus can cause havoc if it later reasserts itself, as we spent a couple of hours researching the effects of the disease.
Still, it's not polio. And an earlier post did claim that widespread vaccinations is not necessarily good science.
For the record, I've got a chip on my shoulder when it comes to bureaucrats;-)
The very young and the very old take a beating from all kinds of diseases that the rest of the population shrugs off. I'm sorry to hear about what happened to your sister. I never heard of something like that happening. It is very sad.
The problem is that it is now mandatory for all school children. Despite tons of evidence that it could be detrimental in the long run.
You know, I don't have any kids, and I guess that leaves me sort of out of the loop with these things, because I had no idea that kids now must be vaccinated for chicken pox before being allowed into public school.
What the hell is wrong with people?! Is chicken pox -- as a child -- really so bad? When I was a kid parents used to hold "chicken pox parties." A kid in the neighborhood would get chicken pox and the other mothers would bring their kids over to catch it, figuring that it is almost inevitable that their kid is going to get it, so why not get it when they're young and the outbreak isn't so bad.
I didn't get chicken pox until I was 15 years old, and when I got it I got it on every square inch of my body, from my scalp to the soles of my feet, to a few inside my throat. It sucked for two weeks, but after that it was no big deal.
For crying out loud, we're not talking about polio! The bureaucrats in the so-called field of "public health policy" ought to learn to just leave everybody the hell alone over little things like this. No doubt some bureaucrat -- looking to justify his job -- put this little piece of policy together so he could strut around proudly at the office Christmas party and retire "with honors" -- a big oil portrait of himself hanging in some government building's lobby.
[Geocentric theory] was one of the few things left from the ruin of the ancient world by the time monastic scribes got hold of it, and the ancients were so impressive...
Actually, they were pretty impressive, and the work they did to predict the motion of heavenly bodies using the geocentric theory is what lent credence to it during the early middle ages even among relatively educated people.
If humanity does not sit back and realize its condition on occasion, instead constantly striving forward in pursuit of unending progress, it will progessively bring about it's own demise. Nature tends to be cyclic, and no species has ever existed on the top forever. Ms. Rand's heroic ideals for humanity could bring about its untimely end.
I think when Ayn Rand and other Objectivist authors have written about ecology and so called "environmentally friendly" policies, one of the points made is the unintended and perverse consequences of anti-capitalistic policy on the environment. When a country sets up protectionist and other licensing schemes, the result of which is to discourage the investment of foreign capital, the environment gets trashed. For instance, instead of working in sneaker factories (to take a much maligned example), the citizens in such a country take slash and burn farming techniques to the rainforests in order to make a living.
Progress is making efficient use of our resources, natural or otherwise. This efficiency is exactly what free markets and the profit motive demand. Compare that to government directed endeavors, with their notorious waste and corruption.
I know above I said "damn the spotted owls" or whatever, but that's really incidental to capitalism. I really think if people cared about the environment -- rather than simply hating the bourgeois and nouveau riche and all the other trappings of a free society -- they would realize that high rise buildings, privately managed forests, modern farming, and the like are in the end more environmentally friendly than the neo-socialistic, man-hating world espoused by environmentalists.
Slashdot Mirror
Your point about the student with the connected daddy is well taken. It's the same all over -- just take the sons and daughters of school board members and administrators for example. I worked in a school where the darling child of a school board member snuck out of her hotel room while on a class trip to Spain to go drinking on the beach at midnight. (This was a 16 year old, mind you.)
The teacher ended up coming under fire for not "supervising" the child properly; the child got a slap on the wrist.
I used to joke about the whole thing. What was the teacher supposed to do to better supervise the child, climb into bed with her? Teachers get in trouble for that, too! ;-)
And you're right in your second point, too. Any bureaucracy is always more interested in giving the appearance of satisfying at least the law's minimum than effecting the nominal goal of the institution (in this case: actually teaching children).
Ninety percent of them, selling back or throwing out only what I thought was absolute garbage.
Your comment rings true, but I think the public school culture squelches the young's desire to learn; and I believe that this is one of the points Gatto's book makes.
Exactly! Democratic politicians are not against NCLB, they simply want to throw more money into it.
Even if that is technically true, the best students from the "best" public schools are a statistical anomaly, having far more to do with the student than the school, and certainly having to do with the vastly bigger number of students in the public school population compared to the private school population.
I will whole heartedly agree with you though that schools (public schools, in my opinion) try to scale bigger than they should. It always amuses me to see a school district of 30 thousand with high schools over 3 thousand students in size talk about the teaching the value of "community." The kids in these schools exist largely in anonimity and are in no way a part of any meaningful school community.
I agree. It used to be the draft that kept the young out of the work force; now it is just as you say. The "subjects" people learn in college are laughable, and people graduate knowing, in most cases, nothing.
College has become largely vocational, and students learn things that would be better learned on the job. The entire economy and society have been distorted however by so-called "higher education" and the student loans that make them "affordable." Apart from the few who go into the construction or home repair industry, auto mechanics, and so forth, most people would eventually find themselves at a disadvantage if they did not have that piece of paper, leading them to a roadblock in their career no matter how intelligent and capable they are.
Nevertheless, most people are indeed at a disadvantage, having either placed themselves in debt or having spent their parents' money on college rather than having that money or credit on hand to apply at some significant juncture in their lives towards some business endeavor -- say, after working 5 or 10 years in some line of work for someone else, they then strike out on their own at some opportune moment.
Higher education (and its friends in the banking industry) has turned into a giant money-making scam on the clueless (which turns out to be most of us). The public school system of the United States serves as a giant marketing tool for this "educational-financial complex," promoting college as the sine qua non for success.
I'm sympathetic to what you're saying, but I think this is the real principle behind your school's success (and other schools like it): the school culture explicitly promoted learning and education as a value.
This is the fundamental difference between such schools and public schooling, no matter what school board members, teachers, administrators, and teacher college PhD's say to the contrary. Learning and education is not valued in the public school culture.
In non-government schools, kids are there first and foremost because their parents care enough about education to spare the money for it. Moreover, every student's place in that school is conditional: fuck up, and you're out!
There are good teachers, good students, and good books in both government and non-government schools. The fundamental difference (that makes all the difference) is the above. Promote the value of education, and the work is half done.
This will not happen in American public schools, except for rare exceptions. Government schools in America cater to discipline problem students, half-idiot students, and every half-baked educational fad that comes out of the ivory tower. Apart from the good students, good teachers, and good ideas that happen to make it in through the doors, the public schools are a dumping ground.
For what it's worth, I went through graduate school, earning an M.A. in education and currently substitute teach in several districts. I'm familiar with what goes on.
I'm all for catching Osama and killing him, but I don't kid myself that there will be any kind of "trial" -- even if they assemble a room full of guys in black robes carrying gavels and so forth. Any trial would be a show trial.
The US -- apart from whatever pretense -- isn't after Osama "the criminal." The US is after Osama the a-national combattant. No laws apply to him but the laws of the jungle.
Maybe those of us who don't fall into the "most people" category will miss the range of motion available on the iMac G4. I own one now. Occasionally I like to tilt my chair back and slump down. To match that posture, I move the iMac screen down, too. At other times I'm just tired of sitting. I then stand and raise the screen all the way up, tilting it all the way back. I can surf the 'Net comfortably for a little while this way. It's a nice change of pace.
I think the G5 iMac is a great machine, but I'll miss the screen mobility when I get one.
Everybody here is no doubt familiar with the "unofficial standard" that is Microsoft Word: meaning, they have been sent Word documents or asked to send documents in Word format as if everybody used Word. Microsoft has ensured that the clueless masses default to Word's format as an Internet standard (or as an example of "best practices" -- to use the latest buzzword).
You can find examples of this in business, education, and government.
It's possible that we're going to see e-mail "evolve" in the same way. Ninety percent of e-mail flying around the Internet will use the new Sender ID standard; those not using it will seem odd and likely be forced to use it more often than not in their various business dealings.
From the article:
I agree with you that the above observation is not new. Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations commented on the very same phenomenon. In fact, his observation appears in the very first chapter of the book:
This observation no doubt appears even earlier in literature. I just happened to recall reading it in Smith.
What I've heard (whether true or not) is that Kerry wouldn't dare take the Swift Boat Veterans to court. Doing that would mean he would have to release his records from Viet Nam.
If I have the story straight, he is the only one that can authorize having the records released. Supposedly, these records corroborate the lack of faith Kerry's superiors had in him, which is in part what the SBV allege.
The above quote can be found here. It can also be found at this page hosted by the BBC.
There is also another quote by Spielberg on Lucas which I remember but cannot locate. Spielberg said something about Lucas's editing skills to the effect of: "I would allow George carte blanche to edit any one of my movies." It's a compliment to his editing skills, but sort of a left handed compliment when you think what that might imply about the rest of Lucas's movie making skills.
Wait until the "baby boomers" reach old age and start to collect on their social security, government pensions, Medicare, et cetera. This is the most well to do generation in American history, and either the largest or second largest (if the number of their kids exceeds their numbers) as well. When they retire, they are going to use their votes -- guided by their unequalled sense of entitlement -- to suck the country dry.
Obviously the security people at airports are trained and no doubt encouraged by a litany of inflexible rules and consequences for those that don't follow them to the letter to simply "go by the book." What we wind up with is the mindless application of bureaucratic procedures by security drones. You couldn't convince me that we are all safer because of this.
It's not that politicians should receive special treatment; but it is ridiculous that one of the most recognizable men in American politics gets flagged by the computer and no one can do anything about it because no one dare stick his neck out for fear of being "flagged" for termination from his job.
On second thought though, with all the bullshit the average person has to put up with in every aspect of life that involves dealing with government agencies and their rules -- at least some of which I'm sure Senator Kennedy is responsible for -- I say hooray for inconveniencing the senator! Let's have more of this!
Your "test" doesn't test anything. No one ever says that those with ADD are incapable of concentrating. In fact one authority has said he believes the ADD tag is misleading: the condition should really be termed something more like "inconsistent attention disorder."
People with ADD simply cannot bring themselves to do the boring, monotonous, things that "normal" people can: things like, filling out paperwork in triplicate, keeping the garage regularly in order, or completing 50 more or less identical math problems for homework, when they understand the concept after the first three.
I'm sure to the above you'll just answer that these people are lazy or lack discipline -- whatever. The other answer could just as easily be that the drones of the world simply construct meaningless work -- from bureaucratic forms, to front lawns that need regular mowing -- just to fill up otherwise ordinary lives and make themselves feel they're accomplishing something of worth, and that non-drone minority finds itself oftentimes lost in this inane world.
Many creative and productive -- though certainly unconventional and maybe even eccentric -- people fit the bill for ADD. Sadly, the curriculum in public school works to undermine the confidence and intellectual growth of those that don't fit in.
I've noticed a phenomenon, too, that I call "geek chest beating." To picture it, think of gorillas trying to intimidate one another by standing tall and beating their chests. Geeks (male geeks) do the same sort of thing.
Everytime one geek jumps down the others throat because the first forgot a semicolon in a piece of code he posted during an online discussion ("Your code doesn't even compile, dunce!"), or because the first called Windows XP an operating system ("An operating system is technically only the code that deals directly with the underlying hardware!!!") -- that's geek chest beating.
You see examples of this in other professions, where men jump down one another's throats to correct trivial inaccuracies in an attempt to prove that they are in fact the alpha of the group. If someone where to claim that it is at its worst in computer fields, I wouldn't dispute the claim.
What woman in her right mind would put up with that kind of crap?
A study was done at Texas A&M University regarding male and female monkeys playing with toys. It seems the monkeys preferred toys according to their sex, and right in line with sexual stereotypes.
Boy monkeys played with toy trucks and girl monkeys played with dolls.
Maybe the start of this thread expresses the suspicion that plenty of kids are prescribed Ritalin even though they may not have ADD. Lots of people suspect that.
I don't doubt there is such a thing as ADD; neither do I doubt, however, that there is such a thing as disinterested parents that would just as soon feed their kid a pill than spend time finding out what the real problem is, or if there is in fact a real problem.
You are absolutely right. This infringement on free speech is so wrong it hurts. Political speech is exactly what the first amendment is about -- far more than some dude's "right" to walk around his college campus naked.
Free speech is dying a rapid death here in America, and when its death is finally here, all bets are off.
I think everybody here has heard of 1984, but maybe the AC is 16 or 17 and just got done reading it for school, or maybe he thinks that a lot of the people reading Slashdot are young and haven't read it or thought to read it. In any case, cut him some slack -- if only out of generosity.
On a related note, I think the book to read is A Clockwork Orange, which is also a very good movie by the way.
I won't say anything more than it applies here, for fearing of seeming patronizing!
As it so happens, my girlfriend is suffering from a mild case of shingles. I am aware that the virus can cause havoc if it later reasserts itself, as we spent a couple of hours researching the effects of the disease.
Still, it's not polio. And an earlier post did claim that widespread vaccinations is not necessarily good science.
For the record, I've got a chip on my shoulder when it comes to bureaucrats ;-)
The very young and the very old take a beating from all kinds of diseases that the rest of the population shrugs off. I'm sorry to hear about what happened to your sister. I never heard of something like that happening. It is very sad.
You know, I don't have any kids, and I guess that leaves me sort of out of the loop with these things, because I had no idea that kids now must be vaccinated for chicken pox before being allowed into public school.
What the hell is wrong with people?! Is chicken pox -- as a child -- really so bad? When I was a kid parents used to hold "chicken pox parties." A kid in the neighborhood would get chicken pox and the other mothers would bring their kids over to catch it, figuring that it is almost inevitable that their kid is going to get it, so why not get it when they're young and the outbreak isn't so bad.
I didn't get chicken pox until I was 15 years old, and when I got it I got it on every square inch of my body, from my scalp to the soles of my feet, to a few inside my throat. It sucked for two weeks, but after that it was no big deal.
For crying out loud, we're not talking about polio! The bureaucrats in the so-called field of "public health policy" ought to learn to just leave everybody the hell alone over little things like this. No doubt some bureaucrat -- looking to justify his job -- put this little piece of policy together so he could strut around proudly at the office Christmas party and retire "with honors" -- a big oil portrait of himself hanging in some government building's lobby.
Sorry for the rant!
Actually, they were pretty impressive, and the work they did to predict the motion of heavenly bodies using the geocentric theory is what lent credence to it during the early middle ages even among relatively educated people.
I think when Ayn Rand and other Objectivist authors have written about ecology and so called "environmentally friendly" policies, one of the points made is the unintended and perverse consequences of anti-capitalistic policy on the environment. When a country sets up protectionist and other licensing schemes, the result of which is to discourage the investment of foreign capital, the environment gets trashed. For instance, instead of working in sneaker factories (to take a much maligned example), the citizens in such a country take slash and burn farming techniques to the rainforests in order to make a living.
Progress is making efficient use of our resources, natural or otherwise. This efficiency is exactly what free markets and the profit motive demand. Compare that to government directed endeavors, with their notorious waste and corruption.
I know above I said "damn the spotted owls" or whatever, but that's really incidental to capitalism. I really think if people cared about the environment -- rather than simply hating the bourgeois and nouveau riche and all the other trappings of a free society -- they would realize that high rise buildings, privately managed forests, modern farming, and the like are in the end more environmentally friendly than the neo-socialistic, man-hating world espoused by environmentalists.
Respectfully,
Mario