Try reading some of the current sf magazines (either _Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine_ or _The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction_. This is where most of the newer sf writers tend to make their splash. It's a great way to find out about authors that you would never buy a novel from, sight unseen.
That said, most of these guys are from the late 80s/early 90s, so you really *should* have heard of them.
You all forget one simple fact: the law in some 48 states requires corporations (publicly-held ones, at least) to act solely in the interests of the Company and the Shareholder. Even if an unusually-enlightened CEO were to end up in charge of a major corporation, he would soon be removed from office when his sense of responsibility and duty to the community lowered the profit margin a fraction of a percent.
Wasn't it the Howard Hughes/Pan-Am travesty of a case that really cemented that in modern case law? I say travesty, because my recollection of it was that Hughes had acted in a way that he believed was better for *long-term* shareholder value, but was sued on the basis that it reduced value in the short run. I'm pretty fuzzy on the details though, so anyone with a better memory, please chime in.
I noticed there's an upcoming movie on Howard Hughes, and I'm curious to see how this is going to be handled (if at all).
Saying "effect" when you mean "affect" isn't like saying "ain't" when you mean "isn't", it's like saying "Austria" when you mean "Australia".
Actually, saying "effect" when you mean "affect" is like saying "then" when you mean "than." It's neither a grammatical nor informational mistake: it's a spelling mistake.
And everyone knows that "ain't" is only correct when it's used as the contraction for "am not."
Good variety in Cross Platform MMORPGs now
on
ATITD Mac Beta Released
·
· Score: 5, Informative
The ones I know are Shadowbane (which I haven't quite given up on yet), Lineage (couldn't quite bring myself to play), and the upcoming World of Warcraft (I'm sure I'll get sucked into that one somehow). Now with A Tale in the Desert that really takes care of most major MMORPG game-styles, doesn't it?
Are there any other Cross-Platform ones out there? I don't count Mac Everquest, BTW, cause Macs and PCs can't play on the same servers.
Well, it's kind of hard to give tax cuts to people who don't pay taxes...
The working poor play plenty of taxes. The unfair federal tax burden right now is FICA, not Federal Income Tax. That's where any tax cuts should have come from. (I know, the Democrats won't do that either.)
Besides when the wealthy get a tax cut, they buy stocks (building businesses) or bonds (lessening the interest on loans for homes or businesses), or angel a startup. If the poor get more money, they buy a foreign made toy. Which benefits the economy?
Answer...both. The last reason that Bush gave for his tax cuts was stimulus for a weak economy. For *that* purpose, buying a foreign-made toy is better for the economy.
Oh, and btw, the effect of this
bonds (lessening the interest on loans for homes or businesses)
is completely undercut in this case, as the rise in demand for bonds won't be nearly as much as the rise in supply due to the increased national deficit.
What supermajority requirement in the Constitution?
I'll agree with you that there isn't a supermajority *requirement* in the Constitution. But with this, the filibuster doesn't need to be proven Constitutional, it needs to be proven *not unConstitutional*. And I don't think that there is a supermajority *prohibition* in the Constitution. So what would be the basis for declaring it unConstitutional?
The only thing I can think of is "one man, one vote" (what is that, the 14th amendment?), but my impression was that the Senate is rather specifically exempted from that anyway, given that its representation isn't based on the populations of the states.
The filibuster is part of the internal rules of the Senate. If Senators can change it through the normal rule-making process, bully for them. If they can't, I can't see anyone taking seriously a ruling that such a long-standing rule is against the letter of the Constitution.
Next, I would ask whether if that is really so it might be because the left has gone very far to the left and has become very much out of touch with mainstream society for good reason.
I would actually argue that the left has stayed where it was, and the mainstream has moved to the right. 20 years ago I was a moderate. Since Bush 43 took office, I seem to be considered a liberal, and I have virtually the same beliefs. (Hell, I'd say I'm even *more* fiscally conservative than I was before I became an accountant.)
I'm still trying to figure that out; I thought it was supposed to work the other way round, where you became considered more conservative as you got older.
What he SHOULD have done is gone to court on behalf of some representative couples and challenge the law in courts.
Which, btw, is exactly what happened here in Seattle. The County Commissioner (marriage licenses in Washington state are issued by the county, not the city) arranged to have a few carefully chosen gay and lesbian couples sue him for refusing to issue them marriage licenses. Then he gave a speech about how he thought that it was a very important civil rights issue, and he hoped that he lost, but that he was obligated to follow the law.
He took a lot of flak for that at the time from gay rights activists, but in retrospect they've very happy he did it that way, since they've been winning the court cases so far. (Still a long way to go before anything is settled of course.) Pretty amazing that he stuck to his guns, considering he's running for governor.
In other words, CBS didn't actually check to see if they were forged.
To be fair, if you believe that CBS is telling the truth when they say this:
CBS verified the authenticity of the documents by talking to individuals who had seen the documents at the time they were written. These individuals were close associates of Colonel Jerry Killian and confirm that the documents reflect his opinions at the time the documents were written.
why would they need to check to see if they were fake? They'd gotten their independent confirmation that those documents existed. Now you can question the reliability of those confirmations (and if these documents are shown to be fake, you have to), but now you've increased the number of people who have to be lying. Which is always a stretch.
Note, it is always logically possible (though not at all likely) that these documents existed at some point in the past (and were witnessed by these unnamed people), lost, and then "recreated".
Dude, you've given some fine rebuttals in this thread, but you're crowing way too soon. It is not *proven* that this is a forgery, it merely looks mighty suspicious.
Calling people who still have open minds "idiots" isn't a great way to convince them (or anyone else).
When overtime pay was first instituted, it was an attempt to compensate employees in cases where their employers forced them to work long hours. In a sense, it was designed as a disincentive for employers to overwork their employees -- taking time away from their families, burning them out and increasing the potential risk for injury etc. Not only would employees have to be paid for overtime hours (not always a given, in the past), but they'd actually have to be paid more than their regular wage.
Exactly. It was all designed as an incentive to hire more workers, instead of to work your existing workers harder. Since it's not working that way anymore (because the cost of benefits make it more expensive to hire new workers than it used to be), obviously we need to *raise* the overtime rate to rebalance the equation. Like to 175% of base pay.
I *think* I'm being facetious...but I can never tell for sure.
Instead of designating workers as "professional" under the new law and avoiding OT pay, companies can currently just pay a salary.
That is actually not true. It is entirely possible to be paid a salary, and also earn overtime. (The calculations get a little funky though.) At least under the rules *before* they got changed.
Your job had to be classified as Exempt from overtime, and that determination is made on a number of factors, including whether or not you supervise anyone else, and whether you have control over the time, manner, and place of how you perform your job.
If you are Exempt, you are hired to do a job. If you can do all facets of the job (including communicating with who you need to communicate with, and meeting all your deadlines) working at home, in your pajamas, from midnight to 1AM every day, then that's all you have to do. If, on the other hand, you are required to be onsite from 8AM to 5PM everyday, just because they want you to, you are probably not exempt, even if you are making a "salary". (Again, under the old rules.) They just try to convince you (and themselves) that you are.
Every employer I have ever had has lost a Labor Dept case for classifying someone as exempt, when they really should have been paying them overtime.(None of these cases involved me, and most happened right before I was hired on.) This means that they were always very clear about informing their employees what they could ask, and what they couldn't, cause they didn't want to have to go through it again. It is my belief that *many* people have been mis-classified, and should have been entitled to overtime, but never realized it. Which is doubtless why the rules got changed.
And BTW, I am not in IT, but I am a CPA, which is often classified as a "professional" that need not be paid overtime. I do, at the moment, receive overtime pay, though.
And what did he do to cause this 2.2% annual job growth rate? I'm curious. Evidence tends to support the opinion that any economic effects of a President's policies falls primarily on his successor - So Bush gets to take the blame for the slump caused by the dot-Bombs, even though he had nothing to do with them.
He (and the Republican Congress) lowered the deficit by cutting spending and raising revenues. This led to lower interest rates which increased corporate profits and allowed them to increase investments and hire more workers.
Because of Clinton's economic policies, we had the dot bomb hit in 2000--but the normal economic cycle would have had it hit about 1997. So you can actually thank him for 3 good years. The recession was probably a wee bit worse than it would have been had it hit in 1997, but on balance, was a plus to him.
So for Bush 43, we can only really grade him on what's starting now, since the rest is left over from Clinton. I agree with that. To my mind, he got it about half right. He put in a tax cut (good for a down economy), he made it temporary (which a stimulus tax cut should be), but he aimed it more towards the upper income (not as effective, because they are more likely to invest than spend--good in general, but not as a stimulus). This ran the risk of having the bad news from rising deficits overwhelm the good news from lower taxes. (Which is what I'm afraid has happened--I hope I'm wrong.) But if it ends up working, I'll give Bush full props.
I'm pretty sure those fancy Selectric typewriters that had their fonts on the pretty little spinning balls had them. But I avoided those whenever possible, so I can't say for sure.
The secretaries sure swore by them. I only ever swore *at* them.
Identical spacing isn't something separate, that's part of the font.
But on typewriters spacing is mechanical and subject to variation.
Unless you're a very fast typist (getting additional keys to hit before the paper has advanced all the way), in practice, on a normal-functioning typewriter, I don't remember any variation here.
Word default margins were chosen because they were the ones that everyone used.
I doubt you've ever even used a typewriter. I have have used them. People used all sorts of crazy margins.
Heh, I was the one doubting that you'd ever used a typewriter. Guess we're both older than the average Slashdotter. (I'm actually old enough that I turned in typewritten papers in college. I have also prepared memos on them.)
Again, practically speaking, changing margins was always such a pain, I never saw anyone do it. You just used 1" for everything. (Except envelopes, and we had a typewriter that we did nothing but type envelopes on.)
And with those given, word wrap is formulaic.
Nope. When typing on a typewriter, word wrap is based on the sound of a bell warning you that you're getting close to the right margin. Where the end of word ends up depends on how long it is and whether or not you hyphenate and that determines where the right margin actually ends up.
I almost went into great detail on this on my previous post, but figured it wasn't worth it. Ah well.
You're right, but unless there were some really long words at the start of a line (such that you can't believe the warning bell would have gone off before he started typing it on the previous line), then you would still expect word wrap to match up with typing. Most people avoided hyphenating whenever possible.
The Word basic font is derived from a typewriter font. So that's a given. Identical spacing isn't something separate, that's part of the font. The Word default margins were chosen because they were the ones that everyone used. And with those given, word wrap is formulaic.
Your argument is the same as being surprised that a song played on a piano sounds the same as a song played on a synthesizer with the default settings, where the default just happened to be "piano".
Frankly, I think it takes a different kind of person to be a good Governer or President than it does to be a good Senator or Representative. One is about leadership (even against the majority) and one is about building concensus and compromise.
You know, you may be right, but if only 2 Senators have ever been elected President (and I don't know who they were, so I don't know if they were any good at either), how would we know? Maybe the things that make you a good legislator would make you an *outstanding* President, it's just that you can never get elected to the office.
David Kopel on his website spent several paragraphs talking about how one could speak only "facts" and not convey the "truth." In Sematics we talk about the "Presumption of Relevance," which is that if you say something, it is presumed to have something to do with the conversation, or what you said before. The textbook example I remember was:
Q: Do you know what time it is?
A: That was the number 12 bus.
In this case, the questioner will usually assume that the fact that the number 12 bus went by can somehow tell him what time it is. (ie it goes by every half hour.) However, you can mislead someone, without "lying" by violating this presumption. Say you happen to know that the #12 bus was 15 minutes late, but don't mention that. Your "factual" response has led the questioner to think it is 15 minutes earlier than it actually is. The movie _Being There_ is a good example of humor that works by violating the Presumption of Relevance.
All of which is to say that, according to David Kopel, at least, (I have not seen F9/11), most of the problems in the movie are from violating this precept--putting two facts together in such a way that the only logical conclusion you can draw is an incorrect one. This is misleading. This is wrong. I decry it.
However, what really annoys me(as someone who opposed the War in Iraq) is that Bush did the *exact same thing* when he argued for going to war against Iraq. I honestly don't understand how someone can micro-analyze one side of the argument, but not the other.
Personally, I could have been convinced to go to war against Saddam Hussein. But not with the arguments that were made at the time, which didn't pass my sniff test then, and look even worse now.
Maybe I'm wierd, but 9/11 didn't make me any more nervous at all. There are crazies in this world. They have been killing people, and they will continue to kill people. All at a ridiculously low rate.
I mean, when I grew up, everyone figured that sooner or later we were all going to die in a nuclear war. And now I'm supposed to get all worried that someone might blow up a building that I'm in? Puh-leeze.
To my mind, the War on Terror is akin to a bunch of Ticktockmen running around yelling "Repent Harlequin!" And to about as much effect.
Heh, I sense a strained analogy breaking down, but here goes:
Educated children = product
Government = management
Taxpayers/citizenry = shareholders
Parents = majority shareholders (because they are disproportionately likely to vote for "directors", show up to "annual meetings", etc)
But that still doesn't leave us with a customer. Hmmm, who consumes the product?
I'd have to go with either the fuzzy concept "Society" (ewww!), or better yet "Local Business". (You might like that better since they're paying taxes into the system, too.)
But the upshot is "customer" does not always coincide with "pays the bills," even when you're talking about straight-forward capitalistic companies.
I thought you were more on track with your previous post of "the customer is the government." All I was trying to point out there is that for all practical purposes, the government there was effectively captured by the special interest group called "parents".
Sure they do. They have the agenda that their customers demand. In public schools, the government is the customer.
True--and not true.
In both cases, the customers are the parents. Because at the school board level, the local parents really are the government--if they want to be. (In every district I've seen. If they can't, then the school district is too big--by definition.)
On the other hand, I think the biggest problem in education is parents who don't care. Followed closely by parents who meddle too much. (If only more parents could be perfect, like I am!) Neither public nor private schools are proof from either of those problems, unfortunately.
I have finally come to the opinion that the things that make a school work have much less to do the big things that people like to argue about, and think make a difference (public vs private; religious vs secular) and a lot more to do with small scale things: how the principal runs things, the worth of the individual teachers, and most especially, what the kids and their parents care about.
I went to a public high school in a town that had no private schools. My younger brother went to a Jesuit high school in a city where the public school system was in shambles. We both did very well and went on to excellent schools (Stanford & Vanderbilt). I feel like I got a better education than he did. I'm sure he feels like he got a better education than I did. But really, the only differences academically were he got a slightly better grounding in the "Great Works" (that's non-ironic quotes, I believe they are pretty great) and I got a wider variety of electives (I think I was the first person in my high school to ever expose the scheduling conflict between Science team and Drama team competitions).
The bigger difference I saw was that whereas I sometimes had classes with people whose only meals were the subsidized breakfast and lunch, his classes were full of people with more money than sense. I think my school prepared me better for "the real world". I'm sure he thinks his school prepared him better for his "real world". Again, we're probably both right.
I'm committed to the public school system, because I think it gives everyone out there the best chance to learn, but it's certainly not a panacea (sp?). As a parent, my first priority is to make sure that my kids understand that learning is fun, and important. (Check!) Then that they have teachers that understand who they are and how they learn. (Check!) Then that the principal of the school supports the teachers so that they can do their jobs. (He's new--don't know yet.) If you do these things, I don't care what school they go to--they should do just fine. If you don't--well, I hope someone else is keeping an eye on things for you.
Slashdot Mirror
That said, most of these guys are from the late 80s/early 90s, so you really *should* have heard of them.
Wasn't it the Howard Hughes/Pan-Am travesty of a case that really cemented that in modern case law? I say travesty, because my recollection of it was that Hughes had acted in a way that he believed was better for *long-term* shareholder value, but was sued on the basis that it reduced value in the short run. I'm pretty fuzzy on the details though, so anyone with a better memory, please chime in.
I noticed there's an upcoming movie on Howard Hughes, and I'm curious to see how this is going to be handled (if at all).
Actually, saying "effect" when you mean "affect" is like saying "then" when you mean "than." It's neither a grammatical nor informational mistake: it's a spelling mistake.
And everyone knows that "ain't" is only correct when it's used as the contraction for "am not."
Are there any other Cross-Platform ones out there? I don't count Mac Everquest, BTW, cause Macs and PCs can't play on the same servers.
The working poor play plenty of taxes. The unfair federal tax burden right now is FICA, not Federal Income Tax. That's where any tax cuts should have come from. (I know, the Democrats won't do that either.)
Besides when the wealthy get a tax cut, they buy stocks (building businesses) or bonds (lessening the interest on loans for homes or businesses), or angel a startup. If the poor get more money, they buy a foreign made toy. Which benefits the economy?
Answer...both. The last reason that Bush gave for his tax cuts was stimulus for a weak economy. For *that* purpose, buying a foreign-made toy is better for the economy.
Oh, and btw, the effect of this
bonds (lessening the interest on loans for homes or businesses)
is completely undercut in this case, as the rise in demand for bonds won't be nearly as much as the rise in supply due to the increased national deficit.
I'll agree with you that there isn't a supermajority *requirement* in the Constitution. But with this, the filibuster doesn't need to be proven Constitutional, it needs to be proven *not unConstitutional*. And I don't think that there is a supermajority *prohibition* in the Constitution. So what would be the basis for declaring it unConstitutional?
The only thing I can think of is "one man, one vote" (what is that, the 14th amendment?), but my impression was that the Senate is rather specifically exempted from that anyway, given that its representation isn't based on the populations of the states.
The filibuster is part of the internal rules of the Senate. If Senators can change it through the normal rule-making process, bully for them. If they can't, I can't see anyone taking seriously a ruling that such a long-standing rule is against the letter of the Constitution.
I would actually argue that the left has stayed where it was, and the mainstream has moved to the right. 20 years ago I was a moderate. Since Bush 43 took office, I seem to be considered a liberal, and I have virtually the same beliefs. (Hell, I'd say I'm even *more* fiscally conservative than I was before I became an accountant.)
I'm still trying to figure that out; I thought it was supposed to work the other way round, where you became considered more conservative as you got older.
Which, btw, is exactly what happened here in Seattle. The County Commissioner (marriage licenses in Washington state are issued by the county, not the city) arranged to have a few carefully chosen gay and lesbian couples sue him for refusing to issue them marriage licenses. Then he gave a speech about how he thought that it was a very important civil rights issue, and he hoped that he lost, but that he was obligated to follow the law.
He took a lot of flak for that at the time from gay rights activists, but in retrospect they've very happy he did it that way, since they've been winning the court cases so far. (Still a long way to go before anything is settled of course.) Pretty amazing that he stuck to his guns, considering he's running for governor.
To be fair, if you believe that CBS is telling the truth when they say this:
CBS verified the authenticity of the documents by talking to individuals who had seen the documents at the time they were written. These individuals were close associates of Colonel Jerry Killian and confirm that the documents reflect his opinions at the time the documents were written.
why would they need to check to see if they were fake? They'd gotten their independent confirmation that those documents existed. Now you can question the reliability of those confirmations (and if these documents are shown to be fake, you have to), but now you've increased the number of people who have to be lying. Which is always a stretch.
Note, it is always logically possible (though not at all likely) that these documents existed at some point in the past (and were witnessed by these unnamed people), lost, and then "recreated".
Yeah, I know. I don't believe that either.
Calling people who still have open minds "idiots" isn't a great way to convince them (or anyone else).
Exactly. It was all designed as an incentive to hire more workers, instead of to work your existing workers harder. Since it's not working that way anymore (because the cost of benefits make it more expensive to hire new workers than it used to be), obviously we need to *raise* the overtime rate to rebalance the equation. Like to 175% of base pay.
I *think* I'm being facetious...but I can never tell for sure.
That is actually not true. It is entirely possible to be paid a salary, and also earn overtime. (The calculations get a little funky though.) At least under the rules *before* they got changed.
Your job had to be classified as Exempt from overtime, and that determination is made on a number of factors, including whether or not you supervise anyone else, and whether you have control over the time, manner, and place of how you perform your job.
If you are Exempt, you are hired to do a job. If you can do all facets of the job (including communicating with who you need to communicate with, and meeting all your deadlines) working at home, in your pajamas, from midnight to 1AM every day, then that's all you have to do. If, on the other hand, you are required to be onsite from 8AM to 5PM everyday, just because they want you to, you are probably not exempt, even if you are making a "salary". (Again, under the old rules.) They just try to convince you (and themselves) that you are.
Every employer I have ever had has lost a Labor Dept case for classifying someone as exempt, when they really should have been paying them overtime.(None of these cases involved me, and most happened right before I was hired on.) This means that they were always very clear about informing their employees what they could ask, and what they couldn't, cause they didn't want to have to go through it again. It is my belief that *many* people have been mis-classified, and should have been entitled to overtime, but never realized it. Which is doubtless why the rules got changed.
And BTW, I am not in IT, but I am a CPA, which is often classified as a "professional" that need not be paid overtime. I do, at the moment, receive overtime pay, though.
He (and the Republican Congress) lowered the deficit by cutting spending and raising revenues. This led to lower interest rates which increased corporate profits and allowed them to increase investments and hire more workers.
Because of Clinton's economic policies, we had the dot bomb hit in 2000--but the normal economic cycle would have had it hit about 1997. So you can actually thank him for 3 good years. The recession was probably a wee bit worse than it would have been had it hit in 1997, but on balance, was a plus to him.
So for Bush 43, we can only really grade him on what's starting now, since the rest is left over from Clinton. I agree with that. To my mind, he got it about half right. He put in a tax cut (good for a down economy), he made it temporary (which a stimulus tax cut should be), but he aimed it more towards the upper income (not as effective, because they are more likely to invest than spend--good in general, but not as a stimulus). This ran the risk of having the bad news from rising deficits overwhelm the good news from lower taxes. (Which is what I'm afraid has happened--I hope I'm wrong.) But if it ends up working, I'll give Bush full props.
The secretaries sure swore by them. I only ever swore *at* them.
But on typewriters spacing is mechanical and subject to variation.
Unless you're a very fast typist (getting additional keys to hit before the paper has advanced all the way), in practice, on a normal-functioning typewriter, I don't remember any variation here.
Word default margins were chosen because they were the ones that everyone used.
I doubt you've ever even used a typewriter. I have have used them. People used all sorts of crazy margins.
Heh, I was the one doubting that you'd ever used a typewriter. Guess we're both older than the average Slashdotter. (I'm actually old enough that I turned in typewritten papers in college. I have also prepared memos on them.)
Again, practically speaking, changing margins was always such a pain, I never saw anyone do it. You just used 1" for everything. (Except envelopes, and we had a typewriter that we did nothing but type envelopes on.)
And with those given, word wrap is formulaic.
Nope. When typing on a typewriter, word wrap is based on the sound of a bell warning you that you're getting close to the right margin. Where the end of word ends up depends on how long it is and whether or not you hyphenate and that determines where the right margin actually ends up.
I almost went into great detail on this on my previous post, but figured it wasn't worth it. Ah well.
You're right, but unless there were some really long words at the start of a line (such that you can't believe the warning bell would have gone off before he started typing it on the previous line), then you would still expect word wrap to match up with typing. Most people avoided hyphenating whenever possible.
The Word basic font is derived from a typewriter font. So that's a given. Identical spacing isn't something separate, that's part of the font. The Word default margins were chosen because they were the ones that everyone used. And with those given, word wrap is formulaic.
Your argument is the same as being surprised that a song played on a piano sounds the same as a song played on a synthesizer with the default settings, where the default just happened to be "piano".
Its default settings produce the same results as a well-typed document on a good typewriter.
You know, you may be right, but if only 2 Senators have ever been elected President (and I don't know who they were, so I don't know if they were any good at either), how would we know? Maybe the things that make you a good legislator would make you an *outstanding* President, it's just that you can never get elected to the office.
Q: Do you know what time it is?
A: That was the number 12 bus.
In this case, the questioner will usually assume that the fact that the number 12 bus went by can somehow tell him what time it is. (ie it goes by every half hour.) However, you can mislead someone, without "lying" by violating this presumption. Say you happen to know that the #12 bus was 15 minutes late, but don't mention that. Your "factual" response has led the questioner to think it is 15 minutes earlier than it actually is. The movie _Being There_ is a good example of humor that works by violating the Presumption of Relevance.
All of which is to say that, according to David Kopel, at least, (I have not seen F9/11), most of the problems in the movie are from violating this precept--putting two facts together in such a way that the only logical conclusion you can draw is an incorrect one. This is misleading. This is wrong. I decry it.
However, what really annoys me(as someone who opposed the War in Iraq) is that Bush did the *exact same thing* when he argued for going to war against Iraq. I honestly don't understand how someone can micro-analyze one side of the argument, but not the other.
Personally, I could have been convinced to go to war against Saddam Hussein. But not with the arguments that were made at the time, which didn't pass my sniff test then, and look even worse now.
I mean, when I grew up, everyone figured that sooner or later we were all going to die in a nuclear war. And now I'm supposed to get all worried that someone might blow up a building that I'm in? Puh-leeze.
To my mind, the War on Terror is akin to a bunch of Ticktockmen running around yelling "Repent Harlequin!" And to about as much effect.
Educated children = product
Government = management
Taxpayers/citizenry = shareholders
Parents = majority shareholders (because they are disproportionately likely to vote for "directors", show up to "annual meetings", etc)
But that still doesn't leave us with a customer. Hmmm, who consumes the product?
I'd have to go with either the fuzzy concept "Society" (ewww!), or better yet "Local Business". (You might like that better since they're paying taxes into the system, too.)
But the upshot is "customer" does not always coincide with "pays the bills," even when you're talking about straight-forward capitalistic companies.
I thought you were more on track with your previous post of "the customer is the government." All I was trying to point out there is that for all practical purposes, the government there was effectively captured by the special interest group called "parents".
True--and not true.
In both cases, the customers are the parents. Because at the school board level, the local parents really are the government--if they want to be. (In every district I've seen. If they can't, then the school district is too big--by definition.)
On the other hand, I think the biggest problem in education is parents who don't care. Followed closely by parents who meddle too much. (If only more parents could be perfect, like I am!) Neither public nor private schools are proof from either of those problems, unfortunately.
I went to a public high school in a town that had no private schools. My younger brother went to a Jesuit high school in a city where the public school system was in shambles. We both did very well and went on to excellent schools (Stanford & Vanderbilt). I feel like I got a better education than he did. I'm sure he feels like he got a better education than I did. But really, the only differences academically were he got a slightly better grounding in the "Great Works" (that's non-ironic quotes, I believe they are pretty great) and I got a wider variety of electives (I think I was the first person in my high school to ever expose the scheduling conflict between Science team and Drama team competitions).
The bigger difference I saw was that whereas I sometimes had classes with people whose only meals were the subsidized breakfast and lunch, his classes were full of people with more money than sense. I think my school prepared me better for "the real world". I'm sure he thinks his school prepared him better for his "real world". Again, we're probably both right.
I'm committed to the public school system, because I think it gives everyone out there the best chance to learn, but it's certainly not a panacea (sp?). As a parent, my first priority is to make sure that my kids understand that learning is fun, and important. (Check!) Then that they have teachers that understand who they are and how they learn. (Check!) Then that the principal of the school supports the teachers so that they can do their jobs. (He's new--don't know yet.) If you do these things, I don't care what school they go to--they should do just fine. If you don't--well, I hope someone else is keeping an eye on things for you.