The 2nd amendment does not remove the State's ability to use force, or punish those that use it inappropriately. The State can decide after you've used force, whether or not the force used was justifiable, or excessive.
However, the second amendment explicitly denies the State the authority to deny the people the option of making that determination on their own in the absence of agents of the State. In DC with the ban on hand guns, the only people who even had the option of using force where the police, or the criminals. The law abiding citizens that got rid of their guns now had the choice to use force removed from their hands.
Besides, the 2nd amendment was not just about hunting and self defense. Whether people like to remember it or not, our country was created out of an armed rebellion. Enough of the people had decided that the British Government was not respecting our rights, and decided that they didn't want to be subject to the crown anymore. The King decided not to let us have our independence (Why would he?), and that left war as the only remaining option. They would either re-subjugate us, or we would win our freedom.
Turns out we won. However, the founding fathers recognized that there was nothing particularly unique about the crown trampling all over our rights. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. They decided that certain inalienable rights needed to be spelled out to prevent our government from repeating the mistakes of the crown (Constitution + Bill of Rights). As a way to ensure that the government stayed responsive to the People, the People were guaranteed the right to bear arms so that if rebellion again became necessary, the People would have a fighting chance against the State.
We Americans like to think that rebellion will never become necessary. I agree with the sentiment, but do not believe that it isn't at least possible that a large enough portion of the population will decide that rebellion is necessary. I pray that it never comes to pass, not because war is undesirable, but because I hope that the power brokers in DC never become so disconnected from the wishes of the People. However, if that day does come, the People have a constitutional right and obligation to fix the government, and to use force to do so if necessary.
There are levels to outrage. In my experience, the outrage is usually proportional to the offense unless the Republicans are involved. Then the outrage is frequently disproportionate to the offense.
And I have seen several posts on/. along the lines of my "They should be a Republican, how could they do this to us" comment when a Democrat made a stereotypically Republican decision on Free Speach. If you didn't see it, that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Your experience may be different. That doesn't mean anyone's head is located anywhere physically inappropriate.
It's akin to the misnomer that is the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU cares primarily about the 1st Amendment. Sometimes they'll step in over Amendments 4-8, but I've never seen them offer to pay to fight a new law that impinges on the 2nd, never mind the forgotten 9th and 10th.
Personally, I don't care which party your a member of, the Bill of Rights should not be impinged upon.
Freedom of speech trumps somebody's feelings over what gets said. The Right to bear arms should trump the states desire to have complete control over the use of force.
Why does it seem like Democrats are at least as effective at infringing on civil liberties as Republicans are, but never seem to get called on their BS to the same degree?
Because the Democrats are the "Party of the People!"
Never mind that they were the only national party prior to the Civil War, the dominant party in the South during the era of Jim Crow, the major proponents of Affirmative Action (which is just racism in reverse), and the "Fairness Doctrine" (currently more of a boogyman being trotted out by that blow hard Rush, than an actual rallying point for the Dems, but it does have it's supporters).
They just keep chanting "Party of the People!", increasing the number of people on the dole from the US treasury, and trotting out images of Kennedy or Clinton, and assure the voters that they're taking care of everything.
As you can probably tell I'm not a Dem, but I don't believe they are all that different from the image they paint of the Republicans. Both are comprised of faliable people, prone to mistakes and greed. It's just that those who vote Republican hold their politicians to a (slightly) higher standard than the Dems do.
Consiquently, when the Dems pull out their pitchforks and torches to pursue a Republican, they are often accompanied by some Republicans that are just as irate. When a Dem screws up the only people in the mob are Republicans.
Since most/. members that are actually afiliated with either party are Dems, and the majority of the unaffiliated are Liberal, it's no surpise that you won't get as much vitriol aimed at this woman than if she were seated on the other side of the isle. The reaction will be more along the lines of "OMG, she should be a Republican. How could she betray us like that", or "all politicians are corrupt, Anarchy RULEZ!!" instead of the "Burn her at the Stake!!" that she deserves, regardless of party affiliation (and of course that goes for all of the bills sponsors).
In my wife's experience, teachers no longer have to join the union/pay dues unless they choose to. At her first school she was not a member of the union.
As to the union backstabbing, that's my impression, but my wife believes they did everything they could.
There is not a single part of Choir grading that is not subjective. Therefore, there is no way to determine whether or not a choir teacher is doing her job with out making a personal judgement call. Your reasoning works for math or science, even english for the most part, but not for classes like gym, choir, band, orchestra, etc. where the grade is essentially what ever the teacher decides that the student has earned since there is little if any paperwork that the students do that can be re-evaluated by an outside observer to see if the teacher is being too harsh or too critical.
I gave the example of the stupid mother that believed her lying son as illustrative of the problems associated with letting the parents have too much say over whether or not the teacher is doing her job. They tend to listen to their children, regardless of their child's reliability. This wasn't the only example of such behavior on the part of parents, and as I indicated at the end of the paragraph. In many instances the parents will refuse to admit that their child was either too stupid, lazy, or ill-behaved to deserve passing the class. I know several kids I grew up with who's parents were able to talk the teacher or administrator into changing the child's grade even though they'd gotten what they deserved. A good example was a kid who cheated on an exam but was allowed to be on National Honor Society and graduate because his mom was active on the school board. The kid deserved to fail and possibly be expelled, but wasn't because the administration was buddy buddy with mom and pulled strings.
I agree that it's too hard to fire some teachers, but it's also too easy to fire teachers early on in their careers. As I said, any teacher in their first 3 years at a school in Indiana can fail to have their contract renewed and the union cannot do anything about it. The contract that allows them to get tenure also prevents them from having any ability to fight the letting go of a teacher in their first 3 years. The example of my wife is someone that got screwed by that opening.
Administrators have a lot of authority in schools. They may not be able to fire teachers after a certain point, but they can make things very difficult/uncomfortable for teachers. The principal's decide various secondary work schedules like who's on lunch/recess duty, who has to stay after school for which programs, whether or not teachers can spend money on various things for their classrooms or programs, reimbursement for Continuing Education Credits or attending teaching meetings, vacation time, etc. All of these can and are used by administrators to keep teachers in line. If you don't believe me, try getting your teachers license and working for an administrator that doesn't like you.
As for having the authority to discipline the students. If the office decides that you are sending too many kids to the office, they'll just start sending them back. Now you've got to waste time sending them out, and then waste more time dealing with them when they get back to the class room. Then you get the administrator stepping in and making things difficult for you when it comes to running your class. In my wife's case she was forced to get the Principals approval for purchasing of any music licenses for her choirs. Not a big deal on the surface, but when he started taking weeks to approve music she needed quickly, and then writing her up on her evaluations for using photocopies of the music instead of legal copies, you can see that everything is not as cut and dry as it appears at first glance.
AS to whether or not my wife is out of a job come August, who's better situated to know? You or Me? She was given an ultimatum at the end of the 3rd quarter. Either turn in a letter of resignation by 7am the next day, or he would file the paperwork indicating that he was not going to renew her contract because she was lax in her job. She hadn't been lax, but he'd used her 4 evaluations as a chance to create false documentation of her s
How about "judging by complaints?" If you get complaints about the teacher from parents (that aren't about the teacher being too difficult or strict -- i.e., not unreasonable or stupid on the part of the parents) then listen to them and fire the teacher. It's really that simple!
How do you determine whether or not the complaint is from an unreasonable parent in a non-subjective way?
My wife is a teacher, and she's had parents call her up on the war path because they made the mistake of believing their child. The kid was screwing off in class, lost a lot of points, and ended up failing for that quarter. The Mom asked junior "Why?" and he came up with a truck load of BS as to why. She called the Superintendant, Principal, and my Wife (In that order), and read them all the riot act about how bad of a teacher my wife is. After finally sitting down with my wife and going over the class work, the grade book, and note's that my wife had taken over the year up to this point, the mother finally realized that Junior deserved the grade he got. However, admitting that your child is screwing off is something that many parents won't admit no matter how much evidence.
In every single one of those cases, the teacher should just fail the student, or kick him out (to detention or elsewhere; it doesn't matter where as long as he's not disrupting class anymore), or do whatever needs to be done. It doesn't matter whether the dumbass administrators will "back up" the teacher or not, because the teacher will not get fired, no matter what (as per the article).
In many schools, failing the students that deserve to fail is not an option. My grandmother taught in the Springfield, MA school system for 20+ years and was forced to retire early because she got beaten up by one of her students (she taught elementary school if you can believe that). The student in particular had done absolutley nothing productive all year. The boy couldn't read at all, never did class work, constantly disrupted class, and my grandmother was instructed by the prinicipal to ignore the child. She was told not to kick the child out of class, and to just pass the child at the end of the year like all of the previous teachers had.
In many schools where you can fail the students that deserve to fail, you cannot kick them out of the class because the main office doesn't want to be bothered with them. I don't know about how it works in other school systems, but the principal can decide not to renew a new teachers contract just because he feels like it (with new teachers in IN being those with less than 3 consecutive years in the school corporation). My wife ran into that problem with a student that has only recently been expelled for hitting the principal. He was the kind of student that went out of his way to cause trouble, disrupt class, and make a general nusance of himself. Early in the year my wife would just send him to the office when he got too bad, but by the end of the 1st quarter she'd been instructed by the Principal that the child was her problem, not the offices, and that she was not to send him to the office anymore.
After that she started sitting him in the hall, but she was soon told that she needed to keep him in the class room so that she could keep an eye on him. Finally she would just sit him off in a corner to keep him from disrupting those around him, but was told that she shouldn't single him out like that in the middle of class, because it would embarass him. Like I said, ultimately he ended up being expelled for hitting the Principal one day when he was being lectured on appropriate behavior.
Each time my wife tried to remove this kid from the situation, so that the rest of the kids could learn, she was shot down by the administration. She had to bow to the administration becuase she was a 1st year teacher in that school corporation (4th year overall), and her job was on the line. Ultimately she was told at the end of the ye
While I don't think that naming the flu after Colbert is even a remotely good idea, I do agree that the name is incredibly misleading.
The "Swine flu" is names so because it contains components common to flu viruses found in pigs, but pigs and humans have always been able to pass certain strains of flu viruses back and forth. Pigs could just as easily think of this strain as the "Human flu" if they had the mental faculties to know and care. The problem isn't that the pigs have the flu, or that they are spreading it to humans, but that humans are spreading the flu to each other. Where ever the flu originated, it's spreading from human-to-human and that makes it a human flu in my mind. An unusually virulent and obviously scary flu, but still the flu
1. By continuing to refer to the virus as the swine flu, we are scaring people away from pork despite the lack of a single case of this flu in pigs north of the US/Mexico border. 2. Even if US pigs got this flu, it wouldn't matter because the flu is a respiratory infection and no one I know eats pig lung. 3. And even if pig lung were a delicacy somwhere, the flu is not very stable at high temperatures so appropriate cooking times would kill it. 4. just to entertain the truley rediculous, even if people were eating pig lung from infected pigs and not cooking it thoroughly, the mortality rate is still incredibly low in the US where, despite it's obvious problems, the health care system is far better than that available to most Mexicans.
The WHO, CDC, and others should be doing what they can to prevent the spread of this supprisingly virulent strain of the flu. We all should be careful to prevent spreading the flu (regardless of strain). However, we shouldn't be scaring the crap out of the un/under-educated at home and throughout the world just to sell newspapers and ad space on our websites.
Hell, the Egyptian government has decided to kill every single pig in the country to battle the spread of a flu that has only been found in pigs in one country, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Now, I've heard some rumors that this is more of an attempt to take a cheap shot at one of the few religious groups in Egypt that do eat pork while they have a sudo-legitimate exucse, but still. Over-reaction without a doubt.
a world wide shortage of medical professionals doesn't necessarily translate into a local shortage of medical professionals. My mother was always talking about moving to FL because they are in constant need of more nurses and would practically double her pay over what she was making in MA. However, because she didn't/couldn't relocate her whole family for her job she worked for a lot less money in a market that wasn't as short staffed with nurses. It's probably due to the high number of community and technical colleges in western mass that have nursing programs, thus generating a much larger pool of available nurses.
I fail to see your point within the context of this thread.
We're discussing potential security problems with paper records vs. e-records. Not the difference between the potential benefits e-records have and the actual benefit we will see based on the natural biases people have toward tactile objects, or their natural resistance to change.
I agree that many people believe "Well, we've always done it that way!" is a good enough reason to avoid change, despite all of the evidence to the contrary. However, e-records are coming. It's now a matter of determining the best/safest implementation and training everyone to follow best practices. Those that refuse to change will find themselves out of a job. Most who prefer paper records will use e-records if it means the difference between a paycheck and the unemployment line.
In the case of e-records, Yes it does. One of the major reasons why there is the big push to get everyone using e-records is the ability of a doctor in FL, for example, to get his hands on your complete medical record if you get hurt while on vacation, away from your regular Physician and his Medical Group in MA. Hell, even less exotic is the transmission between the hospitals that are all members of the Baystate Medical group that covers the entire state of MA. Are the hospitals going to build a private network for record transfers? Probably not, instead they'll use the internet that everyone else uses. I'm not saying that they can't get it right, just that there is more at risk with digital records than paper ones.
Yes, but you have to physically go to the hospital, figure out where the records are, get past the doors, locks, and personnel that are responsible for the records, make you copies and get out without anyone realizing what you are up to, getting you face on a security camera, or leaving your fingerprints where they can be discovered. All easier than it should be, but by no means actually easy.
With digital records anyone with an internet connections can concieveable gain access to the files from anywhere on the planet with far less chance of being caught in the act or figered directly for the crime. Don't get me wrong, I think that digital records are the way to go. I do agree that they are currently being misused, and that their level of utility will be highly variable.
My mother is working with Baystate Medical in MA to get the Psych component of digital record keeping designed and implimented from the doctor/nurse end of things and she's told me a lot of the problems with vendors, management, interoperability, and government oversite. It's a big mess that most hospitals are not paying enough attention to.
Well as far as that goes, yea it has a lot of potential to bite us in the but. I don't think that we should be able to patent genes, unless they are engineered from scratch. Otherwise it's the textbook definition of trying to patent prior art
I'm not sure what you mean by a 'terminator' gene, are you are talking about some gene to make the plants infertile? I do know that roundup ready corn is sold with license that prohibits the saving back of seeds precisely because there is no method that I'm aware of to generate a plant with seeds one generation and seedless the next. Seedless plants like grapes are not spread by planting seeds, but by taking cuttings and growing new, genetically identical plants from those cuttings. If I'm not addressing your point, please correct me.
There is already evidence of GMO genes getting into non-GMO plants, although all the evidence I've seen deals with transfer within the species which is of little concern for various reasons. Most farmers in the US do not routinely save back seeds because it would cause them to miss out on genetic improvements from year to year, whether those improvements are from traditional breeding techniques or GMO's
as to the slow pace of evolution, that is entirely relative. No plant or animal used in agriculture is simply left alone to evolve. The production methods we use apply selective pressures, the environments we grow them in apply selective pressures, our choices as to which seeds to keep back or which sires and dams to reserve for breeding purposes apply selective pressure, and ultimately the more selective pressures the faster evolution happens.
I think a large part of your concern comes from the idea that there is this natural balance and that GMOs upset that balance in some way. Honestly, your right GMOs do upset the status quo! However, that balance was never any sort of constant. The balance is always changing anyway, and change isn't necessarily bad. Unless you are one of those misguided few that believe we should all go back to being hunter gatherers for the sake of nature, you need to realize that Humans are a Part of nature, not separate from it!
Unintended consequences are a fact of life and cannot, ultimately, be avoided. Automobiles kill people, some crib designs kill babies, a medication my grandmother took for morning sickness caused reproductive and immune system damage in my mother and sister, drinking too much water can kill you... Hell, Oxygen causes cancer. The list of things that can potentially have adverse effects in the long run is infinite. That doesn't mean we shouldn't worry, just that if we want to make any progress, ever, we need to decide how many risks we are comfortable with and manage them.
The USDA, FDA, and governmental regulation industries around the world require extensive testing and documentation in the form of environmental impact statements, animal safety trials, and other work before they approve GMOs for sale and use. Many of the tests that are required resulted from the 'unintended consequences' of previous attempts at GMO. A good example is the need for environmental impact statements in the wake of the BT corn that was designed to express a pesticide in it's tassels that ended up killing butterflies. We are capable of learning from our mistakes, and ultimately it becomes a judgement call as to whether or not you trust those responsible for assessing the risks and making the judgement calls. Because of my education and experience I do, many don't.
The costs associated with developing a successful GMO are astronomical, due in no small part to the need to cover the costs of unsuccessful lines of research with the profits generated by the profitable ones. This means that only large companies can afford to try and bring the research to market (Such as monsanto), and we all know how easy it is to spread Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about a large faceless company.
We are not "arbitrarily creating new species and releasing them into the wild." That right there is the logical fallacy that underpins the difference between a legitimate concern and Chicken Little behavior, IMO.
Firstly, we are not creating new species. We are inserting genes, usually one at a time, into already established species. This insertion comes at great cost (both time, labor and money), and is happening with a specific end goal in mind.
Secondly, If the insertion adds no benefit (feel free to have your own opinions on what is beneficial and what isn't, it's a personal judgement call), then the strain is destroyed. It is not released into the wild to affect the wild populations. If the insertion is beneficial, then those that put the time, labor, and money into the project are going to try and make a profit. Letting the genes into the wild is antithetical to making a profit.
Your posts strike me as being written by someone with little real experience in genetics and a lot of experience reading SciFi novels that use genetics as a boogy man. I read those same novels myself, but have the requisite education and experience to know just how unlikely those scenarios are.
Any new technology has the potential to do as much harm as good. No one is denying that. However, the guidelines for regulation of GMO in the US are very tight, and as I've shown above it's in nobody's best interest for these modified genomes to get out. Least of all companies like Monsanto that sink billions into R&D and need to see a return on that investment if they want to stay in business.
Yeah, they are offering a million dollars to solve a problem that will probably take hundreds of billions of dollars if it ever works. It's a token effort for the PR value with so many restrictions that even if someone does get it to work PETA probably won't have to pay up.
In our Grad seminar we discussed this very topic 2 weeks ago. The general consensus is that it's an increadibly complex problem and will never be cost effective using current techniques. The miracle of animal production is that you can take medium to low-quality protein and convert into a very high-quality protein. Current approaches use culture media that consists of Super-High-Quality protein, usually isolated from animals and animal by-products, and actually converts them into a slightly lower-quality protein at a huge cost.
Vat grown meat is a pipe-dream akin to the fabled fountain of youth, warp travel, and selfless politician.
No, they are not any different. I've worked in both the Dairy industry while getting my BS, and the Swine industry while getting my MS and PhD. The only difference being that it is even less likely that boars will escape than bulls, because pigs are usually house in more intensively managed buildings and cannot simpy charge through or over a fence as I've seen plenty of heifers and cows do.
No, what he's saying is that tilling soil is necessary for non-GMO crops, or GMO crops in which the GM doesn't confer herbicide resistance. Tilling the soil increases the amount of fertilizer need/acre because the broken up soil is more likely to run-off in the rain. No-till crops, enabled by inserting herbicide resistance genes into the plant genome, reduce the need for fertilizer as well as herbicide application, decrease soil run off of potential environmental pollutants, and when all things are included in the calculation far "Greener" than Organically produced crops.
The local swamp is irrelevant to the discussion because no-one is planting corn in a swamp. Trotting out the chemical name for a product that is more commonly known by it's name-brand doesn't really add anything to the discussion. If I use the word "Tylenol" everyone knows what I'm talking about without it meaning I'm "echoing talking points."
Farmers are capable of doing the math. Many of them have decided that paying Monsanto's rates for seeds and herbicide is more cost-effective due to the savings gain by having to spread less herbicide (usually less that 25% as much as with using non-herbicide resistant seeds), not having to till, spreading less fertilizer, and being able to worry less about point-source contamination of local water supplies. Others have done the math and decided that it's not in their best interest for whatever reason. I fail to see why everyone else feels the need to get all worked up over the issue. Market forces, and the inclinations of individual farmers will decide well enough without those ignorant of the realities of agriculture adding their uninformed 2-cents.
And Yes, I am involved directly in the agriculture industry.
It is more economical now. If they try to make it less economical, then people will buy there seeds from someone else. Monsanto will never control the entire seed market. Market forces will never allow that to happen. There are too many competitors. You just never hear about them because the anti-GMO lobby thinks its more effective to spread FUD indicating Monsanto is the only real game in town.
So you admit that you arguments are based on an invented stance that no one actually supports, and yet somehow everyone else is supposed to disprove it to win the argument?
So, a failure of a certain industry to prioritize in a manner you approve of means that all GMO's are bad?
Sounds to me like you should get in contact with a plant genetics company, front them some startup money, and see if you can't get that perfect apple made. That's how you deal with this problem, not lamenting that GMO's can't work because they've stumbled in the past.
there is nothing to stop some new start-up from coming in and focusing on longer-term profitability by way of customer satisfaction. You could even start it! That's where all these Chicken Little arguments fall appart. If Monsanto is charging too much or has too restrictive of a license, there is nothing preventing some other company from developing a non-infringing GMO product and competing on price/licensing/production/etc. In fact, it is happening! It's just that the other companies aren't getting the same kind of negative press that Monsanto gets.
So probably best not to put *to* much stock in what "farmers" (huge agri-corps run by paid employees - old school farmers are thin and few in between these days) think is best, because it might just wind up killing you.
As a member of the animal science industry, I can assure you that you are full of shit!
Most large farms are not owned by huge "agri-corps". The farms are incorporated like any decent sized business, but are still owned and operated by the families that have owned them for generations. They've just gotten larger to take advantage of Scale. They do hire outside employees, but usually these employees are professionals just like in any other industry. This common misconception that large farms somehow only happens if the family is no longer involved with the farm is willful ignornace that is encouraged by the likes of Greenpeace and PETA in their constant FUD campains against an industry they are not even a part of.
... because mono-cultures are SO much better than diversity...
GMO != mono-culture
Every company that developes GMO starts with a given breed of animal or cultivar of plant and then modifies from there. They DON'T start from a specific individual and make clones. Usually the handful of successful GMO's are then cross bred with the breed/cultivar that they came from to spread the desired genes around into a much larger population. This Herd/Field of GMO by breeding are then used test the value of the new GMO product and evenutually bring it to market if they deem it a success.
The natural variability within the Herd/Field is smaller than that normall found within that Breed/Cultivar, but not by that much. As they continue to breed the animals/plants in order to create stock for sale, they end up introducing more variability or at the very least maintaining the level of variability.
We will never have a single breed/cultivar become the sole seed stock for an entire market, if for no other reason than competitors will create alternative products that will be based off of different improvements to the animal/plant. We won't get the potato famine again.
The biggest Monster-Under-The-Bed according to groups like Greenpeace is Round-up Ready grain (Corn, Soy, etc.). However, there are GMO alternatives to Round-Up ready that provide pesiticide resistance, GMO alternatives that confer different traits (tollerance to drought, high salinity in soil and water, etc), as well as plent of strains of Corn and Soy that are non-GMO. This impression as though Monstanto is the only player in the seed industry is only selling one product, and is too stupid to forsee the problems of a Mono-culture are ludicrous. It's based on FUD spread by groups such as Greenpeace and I would have thought that/. readers had better FUD detectors than that.
Besides, Monstanto sold/spun off their animal science division several years ago. This is obviously old news.
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That was why I used the word "Complete".
The 2nd amendment does not remove the State's ability to use force, or punish those that use it inappropriately. The State can decide after you've used force, whether or not the force used was justifiable, or excessive.
However, the second amendment explicitly denies the State the authority to deny the people the option of making that determination on their own in the absence of agents of the State. In DC with the ban on hand guns, the only people who even had the option of using force where the police, or the criminals. The law abiding citizens that got rid of their guns now had the choice to use force removed from their hands.
Besides, the 2nd amendment was not just about hunting and self defense. Whether people like to remember it or not, our country was created out of an armed rebellion. Enough of the people had decided that the British Government was not respecting our rights, and decided that they didn't want to be subject to the crown anymore. The King decided not to let us have our independence (Why would he?), and that left war as the only remaining option. They would either re-subjugate us, or we would win our freedom.
Turns out we won. However, the founding fathers recognized that there was nothing particularly unique about the crown trampling all over our rights. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. They decided that certain inalienable rights needed to be spelled out to prevent our government from repeating the mistakes of the crown (Constitution + Bill of Rights). As a way to ensure that the government stayed responsive to the People, the People were guaranteed the right to bear arms so that if rebellion again became necessary, the People would have a fighting chance against the State.
We Americans like to think that rebellion will never become necessary. I agree with the sentiment, but do not believe that it isn't at least possible that a large enough portion of the population will decide that rebellion is necessary. I pray that it never comes to pass, not because war is undesirable, but because I hope that the power brokers in DC never become so disconnected from the wishes of the People. However, if that day does come, the People have a constitutional right and obligation to fix the government, and to use force to do so if necessary.
Um... He's dead. He was already never going to walk again. IRC, his ventilator stopped working one day when he was home by himself and he suffocated.
[P.S. If I'm just missing the joke, then just ignore me]
There are levels to outrage. In my experience, the outrage is usually proportional to the offense unless the Republicans are involved. Then the outrage is frequently disproportionate to the offense.
/. along the lines of my "They should be a Republican, how could they do this to us" comment when a Democrat made a stereotypically Republican decision on Free Speach. If you didn't see it, that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
And I have seen several posts on
Your experience may be different. That doesn't mean anyone's head is located anywhere physically inappropriate.
It's akin to the misnomer that is the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU cares primarily about the 1st Amendment. Sometimes they'll step in over Amendments 4-8, but I've never seen them offer to pay to fight a new law that impinges on the 2nd, never mind the forgotten 9th and 10th.
Personally, I don't care which party your a member of, the Bill of Rights should not be impinged upon.
Freedom of speech trumps somebody's feelings over what gets said.
The Right to bear arms should trump the states desire to have complete control over the use of force.
Why does it seem like Democrats are at least as effective at infringing on civil liberties as Republicans are, but never seem to get called on their BS to the same degree?
Because the Democrats are the "Party of the People!"
/. members that are actually afiliated with either party are Dems, and the majority of the unaffiliated are Liberal, it's no surpise that you won't get as much vitriol aimed at this woman than if she were seated on the other side of the isle. The reaction will be more along the lines of "OMG, she should be a Republican. How could she betray us like that", or "all politicians are corrupt, Anarchy RULEZ!!" instead of the "Burn her at the Stake!!" that she deserves, regardless of party affiliation (and of course that goes for all of the bills sponsors).
Never mind that they were the only national party prior to the Civil War, the dominant party in the South during the era of Jim Crow, the major proponents of Affirmative Action (which is just racism in reverse), and the "Fairness Doctrine" (currently more of a boogyman being trotted out by that blow hard Rush, than an actual rallying point for the Dems, but it does have it's supporters).
They just keep chanting "Party of the People!", increasing the number of people on the dole from the US treasury, and trotting out images of Kennedy or Clinton, and assure the voters that they're taking care of everything.
As you can probably tell I'm not a Dem, but I don't believe they are all that different from the image they paint of the Republicans. Both are comprised of faliable people, prone to mistakes and greed. It's just that those who vote Republican hold their politicians to a (slightly) higher standard than the Dems do.
Consiquently, when the Dems pull out their pitchforks and torches to pursue a Republican, they are often accompanied by some Republicans that are just as irate. When a Dem screws up the only people in the mob are Republicans.
Since most
In my wife's experience, teachers no longer have to join the union/pay dues unless they choose to. At her first school she was not a member of the union.
As to the union backstabbing, that's my impression, but my wife believes they did everything they could.
There is not a single part of Choir grading that is not subjective. Therefore, there is no way to determine whether or not a choir teacher is doing her job with out making a personal judgement call. Your reasoning works for math or science, even english for the most part, but not for classes like gym, choir, band, orchestra, etc. where the grade is essentially what ever the teacher decides that the student has earned since there is little if any paperwork that the students do that can be re-evaluated by an outside observer to see if the teacher is being too harsh or too critical.
I gave the example of the stupid mother that believed her lying son as illustrative of the problems associated with letting the parents have too much say over whether or not the teacher is doing her job. They tend to listen to their children, regardless of their child's reliability. This wasn't the only example of such behavior on the part of parents, and as I indicated at the end of the paragraph. In many instances the parents will refuse to admit that their child was either too stupid, lazy, or ill-behaved to deserve passing the class. I know several kids I grew up with who's parents were able to talk the teacher or administrator into changing the child's grade even though they'd gotten what they deserved. A good example was a kid who cheated on an exam but was allowed to be on National Honor Society and graduate because his mom was active on the school board. The kid deserved to fail and possibly be expelled, but wasn't because the administration was buddy buddy with mom and pulled strings.
I agree that it's too hard to fire some teachers, but it's also too easy to fire teachers early on in their careers. As I said, any teacher in their first 3 years at a school in Indiana can fail to have their contract renewed and the union cannot do anything about it. The contract that allows them to get tenure also prevents them from having any ability to fight the letting go of a teacher in their first 3 years. The example of my wife is someone that got screwed by that opening.
Administrators have a lot of authority in schools. They may not be able to fire teachers after a certain point, but they can make things very difficult/uncomfortable for teachers. The principal's decide various secondary work schedules like who's on lunch/recess duty, who has to stay after school for which programs, whether or not teachers can spend money on various things for their classrooms or programs, reimbursement for Continuing Education Credits or attending teaching meetings, vacation time, etc. All of these can and are used by administrators to keep teachers in line. If you don't believe me, try getting your teachers license and working for an administrator that doesn't like you.
As for having the authority to discipline the students. If the office decides that you are sending too many kids to the office, they'll just start sending them back. Now you've got to waste time sending them out, and then waste more time dealing with them when they get back to the class room. Then you get the administrator stepping in and making things difficult for you when it comes to running your class. In my wife's case she was forced to get the Principals approval for purchasing of any music licenses for her choirs. Not a big deal on the surface, but when he started taking weeks to approve music she needed quickly, and then writing her up on her evaluations for using photocopies of the music instead of legal copies, you can see that everything is not as cut and dry as it appears at first glance.
AS to whether or not my wife is out of a job come August, who's better situated to know? You or Me? She was given an ultimatum at the end of the 3rd quarter. Either turn in a letter of resignation by 7am the next day, or he would file the paperwork indicating that he was not going to renew her contract because she was lax in her job. She hadn't been lax, but he'd used her 4 evaluations as a chance to create false documentation of her s
How about "judging by complaints?" If you get complaints about the teacher from parents (that aren't about the teacher being too difficult or strict -- i.e., not unreasonable or stupid on the part of the parents) then listen to them and fire the teacher. It's really that simple!
How do you determine whether or not the complaint is from an unreasonable parent in a non-subjective way?
My wife is a teacher, and she's had parents call her up on the war path because they made the mistake of believing their child. The kid was screwing off in class, lost a lot of points, and ended up failing for that quarter. The Mom asked junior "Why?" and he came up with a truck load of BS as to why. She called the Superintendant, Principal, and my Wife (In that order), and read them all the riot act about how bad of a teacher my wife is. After finally sitting down with my wife and going over the class work, the grade book, and note's that my wife had taken over the year up to this point, the mother finally realized that Junior deserved the grade he got. However, admitting that your child is screwing off is something that many parents won't admit no matter how much evidence.
In every single one of those cases, the teacher should just fail the student, or kick him out (to detention or elsewhere; it doesn't matter where as long as he's not disrupting class anymore), or do whatever needs to be done. It doesn't matter whether the dumbass administrators will "back up" the teacher or not, because the teacher will not get fired, no matter what (as per the article).
In many schools, failing the students that deserve to fail is not an option. My grandmother taught in the Springfield, MA school system for 20+ years and was forced to retire early because she got beaten up by one of her students (she taught elementary school if you can believe that). The student in particular had done absolutley nothing productive all year. The boy couldn't read at all, never did class work, constantly disrupted class, and my grandmother was instructed by the prinicipal to ignore the child. She was told not to kick the child out of class, and to just pass the child at the end of the year like all of the previous teachers had.
In many schools where you can fail the students that deserve to fail, you cannot kick them out of the class because the main office doesn't want to be bothered with them. I don't know about how it works in other school systems, but the principal can decide not to renew a new teachers contract just because he feels like it (with new teachers in IN being those with less than 3 consecutive years in the school corporation). My wife ran into that problem with a student that has only recently been expelled for hitting the principal. He was the kind of student that went out of his way to cause trouble, disrupt class, and make a general nusance of himself. Early in the year my wife would just send him to the office when he got too bad, but by the end of the 1st quarter she'd been instructed by the Principal that the child was her problem, not the offices, and that she was not to send him to the office anymore.
After that she started sitting him in the hall, but she was soon told that she needed to keep him in the class room so that she could keep an eye on him. Finally she would just sit him off in a corner to keep him from disrupting those around him, but was told that she shouldn't single him out like that in the middle of class, because it would embarass him. Like I said, ultimately he ended up being expelled for hitting the Principal one day when he was being lectured on appropriate behavior.
Each time my wife tried to remove this kid from the situation, so that the rest of the kids could learn, she was shot down by the administration. She had to bow to the administration becuase she was a 1st year teacher in that school corporation (4th year overall), and her job was on the line. Ultimately she was told at the end of the ye
While I don't think that naming the flu after Colbert is even a remotely good idea, I do agree that the name is incredibly misleading.
The "Swine flu" is names so because it contains components common to flu viruses found in pigs, but pigs and humans have always been able to pass certain strains of flu viruses back and forth. Pigs could just as easily think of this strain as the "Human flu" if they had the mental faculties to know and care. The problem isn't that the pigs have the flu, or that they are spreading it to humans, but that humans are spreading the flu to each other. Where ever the flu originated, it's spreading from human-to-human and that makes it a human flu in my mind. An unusually virulent and obviously scary flu, but still the flu
1. By continuing to refer to the virus as the swine flu, we are scaring people away from pork despite the lack of a single case of this flu in pigs north of the US/Mexico border.
2. Even if US pigs got this flu, it wouldn't matter because the flu is a respiratory infection and no one I know eats pig lung.
3. And even if pig lung were a delicacy somwhere, the flu is not very stable at high temperatures so appropriate cooking times would kill it.
4. just to entertain the truley rediculous, even if people were eating pig lung from infected pigs and not cooking it thoroughly, the mortality rate is still incredibly low in the US where, despite it's obvious problems, the health care system is far better than that available to most Mexicans.
The WHO, CDC, and others should be doing what they can to prevent the spread of this supprisingly virulent strain of the flu. We all should be careful to prevent spreading the flu (regardless of strain). However, we shouldn't be scaring the crap out of the un/under-educated at home and throughout the world just to sell newspapers and ad space on our websites.
Hell, the Egyptian government has decided to kill every single pig in the country to battle the spread of a flu that has only been found in pigs in one country, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Now, I've heard some rumors that this is more of an attempt to take a cheap shot at one of the few religious groups in Egypt that do eat pork while they have a sudo-legitimate exucse, but still. Over-reaction without a doubt.
a world wide shortage of medical professionals doesn't necessarily translate into a local shortage of medical professionals. My mother was always talking about moving to FL because they are in constant need of more nurses and would practically double her pay over what she was making in MA. However, because she didn't/couldn't relocate her whole family for her job she worked for a lot less money in a market that wasn't as short staffed with nurses. It's probably due to the high number of community and technical colleges in western mass that have nursing programs, thus generating a much larger pool of available nurses.
I fail to see your point within the context of this thread.
We're discussing potential security problems with paper records vs. e-records. Not the difference between the potential benefits e-records have and the actual benefit we will see based on the natural biases people have toward tactile objects, or their natural resistance to change.
I agree that many people believe "Well, we've always done it that way!" is a good enough reason to avoid change, despite all of the evidence to the contrary. However, e-records are coming. It's now a matter of determining the best/safest implementation and training everyone to follow best practices. Those that refuse to change will find themselves out of a job. Most who prefer paper records will use e-records if it means the difference between a paycheck and the unemployment line.
In the case of e-records, Yes it does. One of the major reasons why there is the big push to get everyone using e-records is the ability of a doctor in FL, for example, to get his hands on your complete medical record if you get hurt while on vacation, away from your regular Physician and his Medical Group in MA. Hell, even less exotic is the transmission between the hospitals that are all members of the Baystate Medical group that covers the entire state of MA. Are the hospitals going to build a private network for record transfers? Probably not, instead they'll use the internet that everyone else uses. I'm not saying that they can't get it right, just that there is more at risk with digital records than paper ones.
Yes, but you have to physically go to the hospital, figure out where the records are, get past the doors, locks, and personnel that are responsible for the records, make you copies and get out without anyone realizing what you are up to, getting you face on a security camera, or leaving your fingerprints where they can be discovered. All easier than it should be, but by no means actually easy.
With digital records anyone with an internet connections can concieveable gain access to the files from anywhere on the planet with far less chance of being caught in the act or figered directly for the crime. Don't get me wrong, I think that digital records are the way to go. I do agree that they are currently being misused, and that their level of utility will be highly variable.
My mother is working with Baystate Medical in MA to get the Psych component of digital record keeping designed and implimented from the doctor/nurse end of things and she's told me a lot of the problems with vendors, management, interoperability, and government oversite. It's a big mess that most hospitals are not paying enough attention to.
Well as far as that goes, yea it has a lot of potential to bite us in the but. I don't think that we should be able to patent genes, unless they are engineered from scratch. Otherwise it's the textbook definition of trying to patent prior art
I'm not sure what you mean by a 'terminator' gene, are you are talking about some gene to make the plants infertile? I do know that roundup ready corn is sold with license that prohibits the saving back of seeds precisely because there is no method that I'm aware of to generate a plant with seeds one generation and seedless the next. Seedless plants like grapes are not spread by planting seeds, but by taking cuttings and growing new, genetically identical plants from those cuttings. If I'm not addressing your point, please correct me.
There is already evidence of GMO genes getting into non-GMO plants, although all the evidence I've seen deals with transfer within the species which is of little concern for various reasons. Most farmers in the US do not routinely save back seeds because it would cause them to miss out on genetic improvements from year to year, whether those improvements are from traditional breeding techniques or GMO's
as to the slow pace of evolution, that is entirely relative. No plant or animal used in agriculture is simply left alone to evolve. The production methods we use apply selective pressures, the environments we grow them in apply selective pressures, our choices as to which seeds to keep back or which sires and dams to reserve for breeding purposes apply selective pressure, and ultimately the more selective pressures the faster evolution happens.
I think a large part of your concern comes from the idea that there is this natural balance and that GMOs upset that balance in some way. Honestly, your right GMOs do upset the status quo! However, that balance was never any sort of constant. The balance is always changing anyway, and change isn't necessarily bad. Unless you are one of those misguided few that believe we should all go back to being hunter gatherers for the sake of nature, you need to realize that Humans are a Part of nature, not separate from it!
Unintended consequences are a fact of life and cannot, ultimately, be avoided. Automobiles kill people, some crib designs kill babies, a medication my grandmother took for morning sickness caused reproductive and immune system damage in my mother and sister, drinking too much water can kill you... Hell, Oxygen causes cancer. The list of things that can potentially have adverse effects in the long run is infinite. That doesn't mean we shouldn't worry, just that if we want to make any progress, ever, we need to decide how many risks we are comfortable with and manage them.
The USDA, FDA, and governmental regulation industries around the world require extensive testing and documentation in the form of environmental impact statements, animal safety trials, and other work before they approve GMOs for sale and use. Many of the tests that are required resulted from the 'unintended consequences' of previous attempts at GMO. A good example is the need for environmental impact statements in the wake of the BT corn that was designed to express a pesticide in it's tassels that ended up killing butterflies. We are capable of learning from our mistakes, and ultimately it becomes a judgement call as to whether or not you trust those responsible for assessing the risks and making the judgement calls. Because of my education and experience I do, many don't.
The costs associated with developing a successful GMO are astronomical, due in no small part to the need to cover the costs of unsuccessful lines of research with the profits generated by the profitable ones. This means that only large companies can afford to try and bring the research to market (Such as monsanto), and we all know how easy it is to spread Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about a large faceless company.
We are not "arbitrarily creating new species and releasing them into the wild." That right there is the logical fallacy that underpins the difference between a legitimate concern and Chicken Little behavior, IMO.
Firstly, we are not creating new species. We are inserting genes, usually one at a time, into already established species. This insertion comes at great cost (both time, labor and money), and is happening with a specific end goal in mind.
Secondly, If the insertion adds no benefit (feel free to have your own opinions on what is beneficial and what isn't, it's a personal judgement call), then the strain is destroyed. It is not released into the wild to affect the wild populations. If the insertion is beneficial, then those that put the time, labor, and money into the project are going to try and make a profit. Letting the genes into the wild is antithetical to making a profit.
Your posts strike me as being written by someone with little real experience in genetics and a lot of experience reading SciFi novels that use genetics as a boogy man. I read those same novels myself, but have the requisite education and experience to know just how unlikely those scenarios are.
Any new technology has the potential to do as much harm as good. No one is denying that. However, the guidelines for regulation of GMO in the US are very tight, and as I've shown above it's in nobody's best interest for these modified genomes to get out. Least of all companies like Monsanto that sink billions into R&D and need to see a return on that investment if they want to stay in business.
At first glance I thought that you said he had already suicide bombed Mt. Rushmore.
Don't go getting my hopes up like that.
Yeah, they are offering a million dollars to solve a problem that will probably take hundreds of billions of dollars if it ever works. It's a token effort for the PR value with so many restrictions that even if someone does get it to work PETA probably won't have to pay up.
In our Grad seminar we discussed this very topic 2 weeks ago. The general consensus is that it's an increadibly complex problem and will never be cost effective using current techniques. The miracle of animal production is that you can take medium to low-quality protein and convert into a very high-quality protein. Current approaches use culture media that consists of Super-High-Quality protein, usually isolated from animals and animal by-products, and actually converts them into a slightly lower-quality protein at a huge cost.
Vat grown meat is a pipe-dream akin to the fabled fountain of youth, warp travel, and selfless politician.
Things may be a little different for pigs
No, they are not any different. I've worked in both the Dairy industry while getting my BS, and the Swine industry while getting my MS and PhD. The only difference being that it is even less likely that boars will escape than bulls, because pigs are usually house in more intensively managed buildings and cannot simpy charge through or over a fence as I've seen plenty of heifers and cows do.
No, what he's saying is that tilling soil is necessary for non-GMO crops, or GMO crops in which the GM doesn't confer herbicide resistance. Tilling the soil increases the amount of fertilizer need/acre because the broken up soil is more likely to run-off in the rain. No-till crops, enabled by inserting herbicide resistance genes into the plant genome, reduce the need for fertilizer as well as herbicide application, decrease soil run off of potential environmental pollutants, and when all things are included in the calculation far "Greener" than Organically produced crops.
The local swamp is irrelevant to the discussion because no-one is planting corn in a swamp. Trotting out the chemical name for a product that is more commonly known by it's name-brand doesn't really add anything to the discussion. If I use the word "Tylenol" everyone knows what I'm talking about without it meaning I'm "echoing talking points."
Farmers are capable of doing the math. Many of them have decided that paying Monsanto's rates for seeds and herbicide is more cost-effective due to the savings gain by having to spread less herbicide (usually less that 25% as much as with using non-herbicide resistant seeds), not having to till, spreading less fertilizer, and being able to worry less about point-source contamination of local water supplies. Others have done the math and decided that it's not in their best interest for whatever reason. I fail to see why everyone else feels the need to get all worked up over the issue. Market forces, and the inclinations of individual farmers will decide well enough without those ignorant of the realities of agriculture adding their uninformed 2-cents.
And Yes, I am involved directly in the agriculture industry.
It is more economical now. If they try to make it less economical, then people will buy there seeds from someone else. Monsanto will never control the entire seed market. Market forces will never allow that to happen. There are too many competitors. You just never hear about them because the anti-GMO lobby thinks its more effective to spread FUD indicating Monsanto is the only real game in town.
So you admit that you arguments are based on an invented stance that no one actually supports, and yet somehow everyone else is supposed to disprove it to win the argument?
Sounds to me like you work for Greenpeace
So, a failure of a certain industry to prioritize in a manner you approve of means that all GMO's are bad?
Sounds to me like you should get in contact with a plant genetics company, front them some startup money, and see if you can't get that perfect apple made. That's how you deal with this problem, not lamenting that GMO's can't work because they've stumbled in the past.
there is nothing to stop some new start-up from coming in and focusing on longer-term profitability by way of customer satisfaction. You could even start it! That's where all these Chicken Little arguments fall appart. If Monsanto is charging too much or has too restrictive of a license, there is nothing preventing some other company from developing a non-infringing GMO product and competing on price/licensing/production/etc. In fact, it is happening! It's just that the other companies aren't getting the same kind of negative press that Monsanto gets.
So probably best not to put *to* much stock in what "farmers" (huge agri-corps run by paid employees - old school farmers are thin and few in between these days) think is best, because it might just wind up killing you.
As a member of the animal science industry, I can assure you that you are full of shit!
Most large farms are not owned by huge "agri-corps". The farms are incorporated like any decent sized business, but are still owned and operated by the families that have owned them for generations. They've just gotten larger to take advantage of Scale. They do hire outside employees, but usually these employees are professionals just like in any other industry. This common misconception that large farms somehow only happens if the family is no longer involved with the farm is willful ignornace that is encouraged by the likes of Greenpeace and PETA in their constant FUD campains against an industry they are not even a part of.
... because mono-cultures are SO much better than diversity ...
GMO != mono-culture
/. readers had better FUD detectors than that.
Every company that developes GMO starts with a given breed of animal or cultivar of plant and then modifies from there. They DON'T start from a specific individual and make clones. Usually the handful of successful GMO's are then cross bred with the breed/cultivar that they came from to spread the desired genes around into a much larger population. This Herd/Field of GMO by breeding are then used test the value of the new GMO product and evenutually bring it to market if they deem it a success.
The natural variability within the Herd/Field is smaller than that normall found within that Breed/Cultivar, but not by that much. As they continue to breed the animals/plants in order to create stock for sale, they end up introducing more variability or at the very least maintaining the level of variability.
We will never have a single breed/cultivar become the sole seed stock for an entire market, if for no other reason than competitors will create alternative products that will be based off of different improvements to the animal/plant. We won't get the potato famine again.
The biggest Monster-Under-The-Bed according to groups like Greenpeace is Round-up Ready grain (Corn, Soy, etc.). However, there are GMO alternatives to Round-Up ready that provide pesiticide resistance, GMO alternatives that confer different traits (tollerance to drought, high salinity in soil and water, etc), as well as plent of strains of Corn and Soy that are non-GMO. This impression as though Monstanto is the only player in the seed industry is only selling one product, and is too stupid to forsee the problems of a Mono-culture are ludicrous. It's based on FUD spread by groups such as Greenpeace and I would have thought that
Besides, Monstanto sold/spun off their animal science division several years ago. This is obviously old news.