Month: August 2005

If you can read this, it’s a miracle

About 1.3 million students nationwide drop out of school between eighth and 12th grades each year. They’re frustrated because they can’t read well enough to keep up, bored by their courses and teachers or just unmotivated to stay in school. The implications for the nation’s economic vitality are “far-reaching and devastating,” according to a Harvard University report. “High school dropouts are far more likely to be unemployed, in prison and living in poverty.”

The same verdict is reached in other recent studies by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) of Princeton, N.J., and the Manhattan Institute of New York City.

“This is a story of losing ground,” researcher Paul E. Barton says in the ETS report.

They can’t read. We know how to teach kids to read. My wife’s program does it using computers, and it works, for ages 4 to 74 and IQ from dull to genius; but the schools can’t teach them to read, because they have a bunch of crazy theories that teachers are required to learn. The theories don’t work, and lots of kids don’t learn to read.

Step #1 to growing a generation of students who can and do read: eliminate a;; the education bureaucrats and administrators. Step #2: eliminate universities’ schools or departments of education. Step#3: return schools to genuinely local control, taking the feds—and even the states!—out of the equation.

But it’ll never happen.

The only other viable alternative? Families who are willing to forgo the economic advantages of a two-income family and choose to teach their own at home. And that’s about as viable as getting families to give up mush-for-brains TV programming.

ACLU—All Criminal Lies Unleashed

Thursday’s Stop the ACLU blogburst almost makes me sick. Contemplating the darling of the Mass Media Podpeople’s Army and the Loony Left Moonbat Brigade, the ACLU, turns my stomach, because there is no truth, no beauty, no just and righteous cause that the ACLU will not twist into a lie.

Freedom of speech? No, no, says the ACLU: freedom of expression. The Founders and Framers had no idea what they were taking about when they intentionally excluded “expression” and intentionally included specific forms of expression (religious speech and activity, political speech and written political commentary). No, according to the ACLU—and the Warren Court, and those following via stare decisis—any old splash of paint (or urine or feces) or grunt or moan or scream is now protected “speech”. Why? Cos they say so.

And to the ACLU a special form of protected speech is advocating the rape of children by homosexual men. Truth.

Freedom of religion? No, no, says the ACLU. Freedom from religion. No public display of religious beliefs are acceptable—oh, unless they be public displays of religious beliefs by m,urdering Islamofascist savages (_1_, _2_), Rastafarians, or Voodoo. Nope, if the ACLU has its way, the only religious beliefs that will be found in the public arena will be “anything but”—anything but dat ole black evil, Christianity.

Government protecting its citizens fromreligiously-excused women-raping (_1_, _2_, _3_) and mutilating, murdering savage slavers? Nope. Can’t have a government that takes sensible steps to isolate members of a religious sect that advocate, plan and carry out acts of unspeakable violence in the name of their moon god. Better to eliminate the evil of school children singing Christmas carols in public.

Get this through your head: the ACLU as an organization hates you, will lie to you and is working toward YOUR destruction.

There, have I said it plainly enough?

Of course, the ACLU will lie about that, too.

This was a production of Stop The ACLU blogburst. Almost 100 blogs already on board. If you want to join us go to our portal and register. Its very simple. We will add you to the mailing list and send you the rest of the info at that point.

“It is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and hang them. Build your funeral pyre and beside it my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your national custom – then we shall follow ours.”–Sir Charles Napier, speaking of the Indian practice of suttee.

The permafrost melting scare seems to be evaporating.

Russian scientists at the Institute of Climatology and Ecology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of the Cryosphere say scaremongering about permafrost melting is much ado about nothing.

From the August 22, 2005 posting of RIA Novosti, “This is just another scare story, this time about the Siberian swamps.”–Academician Vladimir Melnikov, Institute of the Cryosphere.

As Melnikov pointed out, “Both scientific findings and experience suggest that small lakes result from irregularities when laying oil and gas pipes and other engineering systems… [b]ut the scale on which new formations are appearing is small, and they do not pose any threat.”

Melnikov also pointed out that the naturally-occurring Siberian swamps’ methane deposits, far from posing a hazard actually bind CO2, thus drawing down a major greenhouse gas.

Institute of Climatology and Ecology of the Russian Academy of Sciences directorYuri Izrael notes that there has been no significant change in the permafrost boundries, and he adds that the sublimation of moisture from the natural swamps which formed the basis of the scaremongering actually serves to cool the atmosphere.

So, apparently we can chill out on this one.

Crossposted at Balanced Newsblog

h.t. Jerry Pournelle’s Chaos Manor Mail

Self-induced Liberalist Scotomata:the unkindest blind spots of all (with apologies to The Bard)…

An essential component allowing the creation and ongoing existence of the liberalist “reality-based (fantasy) community,” SLS (Self-induced Liberalist Scotomata) is a little understood mental disorder. In fact, as dominated by liberalist thinking as the DSM-IV is, you’ll not find it listed there, along with many other mental-emotional disorders such as pure human evil.

heh

If the Great Satan (G.W. Bush, to a liberalist) were to say the sky is blue, liberalists suffering from SLS would shout, shout and shout again that it was a lie, and besides it’s Bush’s fault.

There, now you can recognize SLS. Next, N-CHUA (Neo-Conservative Head Up… ) Syndrome.

(edited to remove a lotta blogger-induced crap in the html)

Don’t ask me to explain why I’ve neglected to blogroll Michael Yon: Online Magazine before now. I slipped up.

Michael yon is embedded with the Deuce-Four in Mosul. For the real news from Mosul, make his blog a regular stop. All the news that he can (conscientiously) reveal is there. And it’s worlds and away more than you’ll get from the Mass Media Podpeople’s Army.

Blogroll his site and visit regularly for a wee dose of truth.

Jean Fraud sKerry (AKA John F Kerry, the junior lobotomy experiment from Massachussets sometimes found in the U.S. Senate) persists in his blind arrogance…

"We have to go out and fight for the real issues that make a difference in the lives of the American people and we don't need some great lurch to the right or lurch to the left or redefinition of the Democratic Party… "

See Cao's Blog for more… and for how you can be a part of the Free John Kerry's 180 Blogburst along with the bloggers listed below.

Aaron's cc
And Rightly So!
Atlas Shrugs
Balance Sheet
Cao's Blog
Cathouse Chat
Christmas Ghost
Civil Issues
Conservative Friends
DANEgerus
doubleplusgood infotainment
Doughnut Holes
Euphoric Reality
Flight Pundit
Fundamentally Right
Furry Press
GM's Corner
Gribbit's Word
House Of Wheels
i-imagery.com
Infinite Universe
International House of Conservatism
Jackson's Junction
Jay Howard Smith
Kender's Musings
Lifetrek
Moonbattery.com
My Vast Rightwing Conspiracy
NIF
PBSWatcher
Pirate's Cove
Pooklekufr: The Kafir Constitutionalist
Power and Control
Private Radio
Progressive Conservatism
Ravings Of A Mad Tech
Reasoned Audacity
Republican Vet
Right in Philly
Rottweiler Puppy
Shades of Gray
Something…and Half of Something
Stop the ACLU
Tall Glass of Milk
The Babaganoosh
The Creative Conservative
The Dark Citadel
The Paragraph Farmer
The Pulpit Pounder
The Sunnyeside Of Life
Think About It
Third World County
TMH's Bacon Bits
Uncle Jack
Villainous Company
Web-Nuts
What Attitude Problem?
Where's Your Brain?
Word Park Blog

See UPDATE below

Well, I guess we’ll find out soon just how good Sony tech support is…

In recent years, I’ve had mixed results getting product support from various big name computer and peripheral manufacturers. No names, but [OPINION!] HP’s tech support really stinks. heh Dell, once ya get through the maze of voicemail and call back a few times to get someone who speaks intelligible English, is not half bad.

Called Sony this a.m. about Violet, Lovely Daughter’s Sony Vaio notebook. Not an auspicious beginning… She registerred it online the very day she bought it. They had no record of it. Not only that, their automated call system had “identified” the caller ID-blocked number I called from as someone with an open incident on a Sony TV.

So far, so bad.

Got her registered… sorta. Although she bought Violet in January, and thus was within her one year parts/service warranty, they wanted $250 to repair Violet. Said she wasn’t in warranty.

Almost strike three. Asked the umpire to check his glasses, AGAIN informed tech support of the purchase date in January and was told to fax the reciept to get clearance for service.

OK, faxed. Now, “wait 2-3 hours for it to show up in the system and call back.”

Oooooo-Kay. We’ll see. The 8-month-old reciept is virtually illegible. If they hadn’t lost her original registration, Violet would already be on the way in for repairs under warranty.

We’ll just see.

UPDATE:

OK, happy ending. Rest of the story? Well, since you ask so nicely, sure.

First of all, had to call tech support because the documentation with the comp is extremely skimpy, NO tech specs, manuals or FAQs on the Sony tech support site referencing this comp (although there is a full library of driver and patch downloads). So, had to call tech support just to get info on whatever quirky fault could have caused the issue.

Called back at appointed time. Went through the voice-actuated auto-voicemail thing. Got connected to a tech who promptly called me by someone else’s name… cos the automated voicemail system had shuffled me to someone along with someone else’s trouble ticket (although it had read back to me my own TT# for verification). I think they need to work on their automated system.

When the tech finally located my TT, he verified that the fax had been recieved and that Lovely Daughter and Violet were registered and covered under warranty. Then he had me run through the same procedures I’d already tried on my own, then with the tech this a.m., and… Violet started right up.

It was the dreadlock wig and chicken bone rattle, cos I did not one single thing different to this a.m.’s sessions—the one before calling tech support and the one after.

We were both puzzled. So, “…reset the BIOS?”

“OK, let’s do that.”

“How? It’s not in the docs.”

He gave me the secret handshake, I reset the bios, we did a buncha other nonsensical stuff to make ourselves feel all techie and Violet just flat didn’t care. But Violet’s such a lil lady, she kept right on booting right up through it all.

The techie did try to blow some smoke on causes of the initial non-booting issue, but although my B.S. detector was blaring in my ear I just shut up and let him feel cool. Just glad Violet decided to be cooperative. Finally figured she just needed to sleep in a lil longer and didn’t wanna wake up.

Girls’ day in.

🙂

…well, not anything worth much beyond an, uhm, passing… thought. But it’s a real gas.