Working day tomorrow - 17 April 2009
Apr. 18th, 2009 12:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptHere up top, the most important thing in the universe... Oprah is getting on Twitter. Slightly less important, though, many types of plastic with the neat recycle-looking symbol aren't really recyclable.
Across the nations, 1500 farmers committed mass suicide, after having been driven to bankruptcy by crop failures. The economy is bad everywhere. An earthquake in Afghanistan can't help that.
Claiming that he hadn’t read the whole thing, and thus didn’t know about provisions that restricted women’s rights, Afghanistan's President, facing demonstrators and criticism from the world, will change the law so that it does not permit marital rape.
North Korea expelled the United States nuclear monitors, in reaction to the UN criticizing the recent rocket launch from the North.
Spain's prosecutors issued a nonbinding opinion against prosecuting American officials in Spain for their advice that let torturing of prisoners by the United States go forward. They preferred to let the United States handle the matter, something unlikely to happen because of this Administration’s stated reticence to investigate.
President Obama has indicated he prefers to enforce existing laws against assault weapons flowing into Mexico rather than craft new legislation, which means it will stay legal in the United States to own military-style assault weapons.
Domestically, the Vermont state legislature is moving toward re-legalizing underage persons send explicit pictures of themselves to friends, instead of charging them under child pornography laws.
A single-picture refutation of the teabaggers. Which wouldn’t deter Mr. Turd Blossom if he saw it. But Turd Blossom only campaigns that we did fine without federal tax increases for the last 15 years, and that people want simpler tax codes, rather than getting rid of all taxes. However, Ms. Bandes goes all the way, declaring the tea parties a success, and blaming Rachel Maddow for christening the protesters as “teabaggers”, which, I do believe, has about as much validity as GlaDOS’s cake.
On a related note, Fivethirtyeight suggests that liberals might like it a whole lot if Texas did actually secede.
Having caught hell from conservatives about the language they used, the DHS claims that they issued the report despite concerns from their civil liberties people, claiming that the footnote that sparked things should have been rewritten. At least one person has the right idea - sure, it could be written better, but it got the point across that despite the GOP’s assurances, there are conservatives who would do damage to the country.
Last before opinions, the states are looking to the sins of the populace as a way of funding budget shortfalls, which will generate either revenue or virtue.
Staring off the opinions, The WSJ believes there's been a racket going on where law firms pay politicians for the privilege of litigating for the state in no-bid contracts. The payment takes the form of campaign donations.
Mr. Henninger suggests we think of North Korea and Iran as pirates as well, and give them the same response as the Marine snipers did to the Somali pirates, because Iran does not intend on reciprocating any sort of good will that we give them. Mr Gerecht thinks we do the world a disservice by ignoring the face that violent extremist Islam is a major part of the religion, for which I’m sure he will also soon be saying that we do the world a disservice by ignoring the wide swath of violence in Christianity as well. His solution, however, is decent - keep asking the questions that force people to think and decide whether they want to emphasise or de-emphasise that tradition. Although, we could also do with less opinions claiming that, say, Indonesia is rejecting extremism by not electing members to the government from Islam-backed parties.
Last out, Mr. Greene says it's clear that teachers unions want to kill charter schools, so that everyone is forced to attend the same mediocre public education and the unions can reap all the tax dollars for themselves instead of having them be put to use educating kids. Because teachers unions hate children, and hate even more that charter schools are educating kids better than they can. Funding differences, affluence of neighborhood, and the ability to exclude students means nothing, of course.
And, lest we forget, carbon cap-and-trade taxes are useless because they make the people, not the corporations, pay with increased rates.
In technology and science, the discovery of an iron-breathing species of microbes in a glacier, proving that we can adapt to just about anything if given the right panic circumstances, nanotech getting even smaller, another possibly effective method of defecting objects on a collision course with Terra, "motorized" DNA, more robots doing more tasks, metamaterials that could make telecommunications much faster, using quantum theory to tey and explain why people are not coldly rational beings, and the discovery of a sixth genetic nucleotide, so now we have six letters to combine.
Last for tonight, a company that makes jewelry using a scar's impression as the focal point, some very interesting surreal art, and as part of a museum on women's issues, lots of advertisements over time for menstrual products.
Oh, something that you’ll actually use? Try ten words that English should pilfer from the pockets of their native tongues.
Across the nations, 1500 farmers committed mass suicide, after having been driven to bankruptcy by crop failures. The economy is bad everywhere. An earthquake in Afghanistan can't help that.
Claiming that he hadn’t read the whole thing, and thus didn’t know about provisions that restricted women’s rights, Afghanistan's President, facing demonstrators and criticism from the world, will change the law so that it does not permit marital rape.
North Korea expelled the United States nuclear monitors, in reaction to the UN criticizing the recent rocket launch from the North.
Spain's prosecutors issued a nonbinding opinion against prosecuting American officials in Spain for their advice that let torturing of prisoners by the United States go forward. They preferred to let the United States handle the matter, something unlikely to happen because of this Administration’s stated reticence to investigate.
President Obama has indicated he prefers to enforce existing laws against assault weapons flowing into Mexico rather than craft new legislation, which means it will stay legal in the United States to own military-style assault weapons.
Domestically, the Vermont state legislature is moving toward re-legalizing underage persons send explicit pictures of themselves to friends, instead of charging them under child pornography laws.
A single-picture refutation of the teabaggers. Which wouldn’t deter Mr. Turd Blossom if he saw it. But Turd Blossom only campaigns that we did fine without federal tax increases for the last 15 years, and that people want simpler tax codes, rather than getting rid of all taxes. However, Ms. Bandes goes all the way, declaring the tea parties a success, and blaming Rachel Maddow for christening the protesters as “teabaggers”, which, I do believe, has about as much validity as GlaDOS’s cake.
On a related note, Fivethirtyeight suggests that liberals might like it a whole lot if Texas did actually secede.
Having caught hell from conservatives about the language they used, the DHS claims that they issued the report despite concerns from their civil liberties people, claiming that the footnote that sparked things should have been rewritten. At least one person has the right idea - sure, it could be written better, but it got the point across that despite the GOP’s assurances, there are conservatives who would do damage to the country.
Last before opinions, the states are looking to the sins of the populace as a way of funding budget shortfalls, which will generate either revenue or virtue.
Staring off the opinions, The WSJ believes there's been a racket going on where law firms pay politicians for the privilege of litigating for the state in no-bid contracts. The payment takes the form of campaign donations.
Mr. Henninger suggests we think of North Korea and Iran as pirates as well, and give them the same response as the Marine snipers did to the Somali pirates, because Iran does not intend on reciprocating any sort of good will that we give them. Mr Gerecht thinks we do the world a disservice by ignoring the face that violent extremist Islam is a major part of the religion, for which I’m sure he will also soon be saying that we do the world a disservice by ignoring the wide swath of violence in Christianity as well. His solution, however, is decent - keep asking the questions that force people to think and decide whether they want to emphasise or de-emphasise that tradition. Although, we could also do with less opinions claiming that, say, Indonesia is rejecting extremism by not electing members to the government from Islam-backed parties.
Last out, Mr. Greene says it's clear that teachers unions want to kill charter schools, so that everyone is forced to attend the same mediocre public education and the unions can reap all the tax dollars for themselves instead of having them be put to use educating kids. Because teachers unions hate children, and hate even more that charter schools are educating kids better than they can. Funding differences, affluence of neighborhood, and the ability to exclude students means nothing, of course.
And, lest we forget, carbon cap-and-trade taxes are useless because they make the people, not the corporations, pay with increased rates.
In technology and science, the discovery of an iron-breathing species of microbes in a glacier, proving that we can adapt to just about anything if given the right panic circumstances, nanotech getting even smaller, another possibly effective method of defecting objects on a collision course with Terra, "motorized" DNA, more robots doing more tasks, metamaterials that could make telecommunications much faster, using quantum theory to tey and explain why people are not coldly rational beings, and the discovery of a sixth genetic nucleotide, so now we have six letters to combine.
Last for tonight, a company that makes jewelry using a scar's impression as the focal point, some very interesting surreal art, and as part of a museum on women's issues, lots of advertisements over time for menstrual products.
Oh, something that you’ll actually use? Try ten words that English should pilfer from the pockets of their native tongues.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-20 07:07 am (UTC)If we did as you suggested and actually believed that children can make high standards, and could remove the social stigma of needing to stay on an extra year so as to achieve those standards, then public schools would likely improve, even at current funding levels or with some cuts. It's that school has become prison instead of education that's killing the students.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-20 04:59 pm (UTC)Case in point: group of 3rd graders. I was subbing for a science teacher, who taught several lots of students each day; their regular classroom teachers stayed and "monitored." This meant telling them that everything they were doing was wrong. Their assignments were to define some words from their book, and to read some sections and answer the questions. Some of the students wrote one word, found the definition, wrote it down, wrote the next word, etc. Some wrote down all the words, leaving space between, and then went back to do the definitions. Some students found the definition in the text of the section, some used the glossary in the back. Their teacher told them they were wrong if they did not do it that first way; what difference does it make?! "You might run out of room." Then they'll learn to leave more space. "Don't use the glossary." Why on Earth not?
I could go on. I presume our teachers are being taught to favor form over function, so they're getting caught up in correcting minutae that doesn't really matter, and the students understandably must get tired of that nonsense before too long, and quit listening. Form has its place, but I've yet to see teachers try to inspire, in my stint doing this. *headdesk*
no subject
Date: 2009-04-20 07:10 pm (UTC)I also think that it's interesting that they're telling the students that there's only one acceptable way of finding an answer - they're generating hidebound students who can't think for themselves.
That form/function problem is because there are useless standardized tests that determine the fate of a school's funding. So rather than being able to teach what works and make sure the knowledge sticks, they have to teach to the test and the test's methods, so that they don't end up failing and having their funding cut to ribbons.