Month: April 2006

Posted on

A sensible start to education reform/ Friday—Weekend Open Post

This is an open trackback post, open all weekend long. Link to this post and track back. See more information below the post body.

This makes so much sense that it’s bound to never happen (at least as long as teachers’ unions, educrats and politicians are in the mix). Jerry Pournelle makes the following suggestion as part of his response to a reader who was himself responding to an earlier comment on education by Pournelle. Confused? Go read the posts. 1 2

“As a first cut I would offer first grade teachers a bonus of 100% of base salary if 100% of the pupils could read at the end of first grade; 50% bonus if 99% (or all but one) can read; 10% bonus if all but two; no bonus otherwise. It would make first grade teaching interesting…”

Well, d’oh, of course! If a first grade teacher has more than a couple of students who cannot read by year’s end, they have simply not done their job. Now, that could be because some jackass administrator has placed so many barriers in the way of the teacher doing his/her job that it was nigh onto impossible to do any real teaching, but it’d more likely be because the teacher was taught wrong by some jackass school of education. As Pournelle further noted,

“… give a teacher a class of IQ 70 and it will be very hard work getting them to learn to read, and they won’t learn much else — but they WILL learn to read if properly taught.”

Big “if” there. Any readers with young children (or grandchildren or neices/nephews) might want to explore Roberta Pournelle’s reading program before some prison for kids warden (disingenuously called “public school principal/superintendant”) gets its paws on them and passes them to a hamstrung teacher. (Did I just label pubschool administrators as “other than human”? Yep. And I’ll do it again. As a class, the dumbest things in “public education” are the critters that go into administration. Dumber than rocks—with the ocassional notable exception.)

Link to this post and track back. Open all weekend.

Also note the other fine blogs featuring linkfests at Linkfest Haven.

Linkfest Haven

Continue reading “A sensible start to education reform/ Friday—Weekend Open Post”

Posted on

Just stuff

This is just some geeky stuff. Nothing to see here; move it along, and all that (if this sort of stuff doesn’t interest you much). There’s a good tip to some grat info about the invasion of the U.S. in a post below.

OK, the geeky stuff…

Internet Exploder uswers who are readers of this blog have risen back to about half the number of readers/visitors. *sigh* Get a clue, folks. It’s not called (by me and now most of my clients) “Internet Exploder, the world’s crappiest browser” for nothing.

The other half of the readership is now about equally divided between Opera and Mozilla (mostly Firefox) with a sprinkling of Safari users. Interesting thing (to me, at least): the Opera users are mostly Windows-based, but there are a few who are Linux/Opera users and even a Mac user who browses the site with Opera. I’d like to see a few phone users who drop in with Opera, but that’s just cos I’d like to see its use spread more.

That’s all. You may return to your regular fare, now.

Posted on

“Some animals are more equal than others… “

Linknzona has an important post up.

Here’s the nut of his case:

Will it be a nation integrated under equal justice? Or will it be a nation with one set of laws for one group and another set of laws for other groups based on race and national origin? We have tried this before and got our bloodiest war ever, 600,000 deaths in the Civil War, to restore equal justice under law. Later it took the upheavals of the bloody Civil Rights struggle when we tried it again nearly a century later. In both cases Americans fought and died for equal justice under law free of race and national origin as means of discrimination.

But here we are again. Our leaders are now saying if you are Hispanic illegal aliens, your rights exceed those of other illegal aliens, and even, the rights of legal immigrants and native born Americans of all races.

“Important” doesn’t say the half of it. Go. Read.

And after reading LomaAlta’s piece at Linknzona, I recommend this article on immigration from The Center for Reclaiming America’s online book, “Issues Tearing Our Nation’s Fabric”. A sample:

The problems created by these inequities cannot be measured in dollars and cents or in quality of life alone. At this moment there are nearly four million eligible people on waiting lists for legal immigration to this country; some have waited as long as eighteen years. But illegal immigration has further extended the delay, as the steady stream of invading peoples makes a mockery of American law and immigration policies and places law-abiding citizens and thousands of legal aliens at a disadvantage.

This political football game that congresscritters (and yes, President Bush) have turned into a game of “keep away from the electorate” is more than just an issue of economics, as many political poltroons play it, more than an issue of political and diplomatic relations with Mexico or any other country, more than just an “immigration issue” (as many paint it). It is an issue of justice, of fairness, of security and of soveriegnty.

Will we be a nation of equal justice, regardless of race, creed or national origins? Will we even survive the depredations of Washington pols to be a nation at all?

Asking, “Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?” at Basil’s, TMH’s Bacon Bits, Woman Honor Thyself and Freedom Folks.

Posted on

Acts of War?

Mini-rant ahead. Buckle up.

Consider:

“If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”—A Nation At Risk – April 1983

Ask yourselves: with four year college graduates showing an appalling lack of reading comprehension in a recent survey, are we better off now than 23 years ago, or worse? Why have we not isolated and vanquished the enemy that has foisted off an ever more expensive “prisons for kids” system of “education” on us? Complacency? Stupidity? What?

Of course if the goal is to see that the children of people rich enough to send their children to private schools, or to have a stay at home parent to home school, will get far ahead of everyone else regardless of intelligence or merit, we may achieve that goal… _*_

The war is indeed in progress… and it is we ourselves who are either waging it against our own or acting as dupes or witting accomplices of the educrats, politicians and others who are wrecking the minds of yet another generation.

More? How about, “We have seen the enemy and he is us”? Yup. We keep electing traitors to Congress. What else can they be when they refuse to enforce our borders? (*sigh* And here is also President Bush’s greatest failing: he has joined the enemies of the United States in inviting invaders to stay. *profound sigh*)

“…a nation is a country with a valid government when that nation-country-government can control its borders… permitting the proper administration of its governance over that territory…” _**_ (pdf file linked)

Let me just add that it seem to me that a country whose government refuses to defend its borders has an illegitimate government–especially a supposedly democratic republic whose populace is strongly in agreement that defense of its borders is a high priority. Hmmm, am I saying that our nation’s government is illegitimate?

It seems intend on proving itself so.

“The truth is advocates of amnesty, guest-worker programs and open borders are unconcerned about the 280 million American citizens, the men and women of this country who work for a living and their families.”—Lou Dobbs

Yup. An “act of war” upon its own citizens! Seems a legitimate reading of amnesty pols’ actions.

I still say we should deport Congress, all educrats and pubschool administrators, etc. (after seizing all retirement funds and personal assets) to Mexico. Then raze all the schools of education in colleges and universities, build walls on our southern AND northern borders, consider a Constitutional amendment making it a capital (as in “shoot on sight”) offense to be a “career politician” (borrowing a bit from H. Beam Piper, since I just re-read Little Fuzzy :-)) and demolish the IRS, as a good start on returning the federal government to something that would at least be remotely recognizeable to the Founders.

Rantin’ n ravin’ at TMH’s Bacon Bits and Diane’s Stuff.

Posted on

Fair Tax Blogburst

I’ve long designated April 15 (or the following Monday if “tax day” ocurred on a weekend as it did this year) as a “National Day of Mourning”–used to shave my beard every April 15 as a sign of observance, in fact. *heh* This year? The Fair Tax Blogburst, “short and sweet.”

In honor of everyone’s favorite day of the year, Terry and I decided to grab his camcorder and catch up with some of the foot soldiers in the Fair Tax campaign. Of course, April 17th was D-Day since April 15th fell on a Saturday, so we ventured to the main U.S. Post Office for Birmingham, Alabama, camcorder in hand. If you are one of the prudent souls who actually plans ahead in their preparation, watching your fellow denizen is quite comical on Tax Day. A post office branch is no less similar to that of a colony of ants as they scurry about battling their fellow procrastinators.

We hoped to catch some perspectives from fellow volunteers to illustrate the appeal of the Fair Tax, and to illustrate how everyone who reads this BlogBurst can see how easy it is to get involved as we all attempt to have this proposition move forward in Congress. Further, this just goes to show what each of the BlogBurst participants know, but, hopefully, it will move forward in showing how inefficient our current system truly is. Regardless of whether these individuals procrastinated, this is needless wasted time and energy that could be better spent.

Click the link below to view the video. It will open in a separate window.

The FairTax Blogburst is jointly produced by Terry of The Right Track Blog and Jonathan of Publius Rendezvous. If you would like to join us, please e-mail Terry or Jonathan. You will be added to our mailing list and blogroll.

Noted at Blue Star Chronicles

Posted on

Little Fuzzy/Wednesday Open Trackback Alliance Post

This is an Open Trackback Alliance post. Link to this post and track back.

Complete Fuzzy

Complete Fuzzy

For those of y’all who remember H. Beam Piper (and for those of y’all who have no idea who I’m talking about :-)), Little Fuzzy is in the public domain, now. If you don’t already own a copy, CLICK the link (on the title), download a copy and read it. Come on back and we’ll talk about sapience… and whether Mass Media Podpeople, Academia Nuts and Political Poltroons can meet all the criteria for sapience outlined in the book, eh?

Open post. Link to this post and track back.

Also note the other fine blogs featuring linkfests at Linkfest Haven.

Linkfest Haven

Posted on

That Great Sucking Sound

A short roundup of a few of the posts/articles that have caught my attention recently.

Let’s start off with some mind-expanding imagry, courtesy of NASA via a tip from a Chaos Manor reader. Just CLICK on the image for a larger size:

Black Holes

That’s a composite X-ray and radio photo of two “supermassive” black holes orbiting each other.

If you don’t mind the maths, here’s an interesting presentation showing rates of incarceration of blacks as opposed to whites in the states of the union. The differences in rates in so-called “Blue” states and “Red” states may be a shocker to faux liberals, so if you show it to aquaintances of the “blue” persuasion, have a ressucitator handy. Be sure to check other material posted at La Griffe du Lion (gotta love that: “The Lion’s Claw”–*heh*).

I ought to have listed Linknzona as a “under-read no matter how big the traffic” blog by now. Here’s a sample of Lomaalta’s work, and another.

If those two posts don’t convince you to blogroll Linknzona, then what are you doing visiting third world county?

Backlash against dumb-dumb science courses in San Diego’s prisons for kids. The headline and subs:

Top High Schools Fight New Science As Overly Simple.
San Diego’s Physics Overhaul Makes Classes Accessible,
Spurs Parental Backlash. Test Scores Barely Budge

For further mind-expansion, read Pascal’s Wager. (Heck, read all of Pensees. Easy-peasy: you can do it in dribs and drabs.)

A reminder of the converse of the sin of despair is Alexandra’s The Christian Virtue of Hope. I need to re-read that about once a week, I think.

The Carnival of Liberty is up. Good stuff, maynard.

This dog ain’t named “Boo”–With a Little Faith. (And thanks, Petifog, for dropping by and commenting. I might never have found your blog otherwise.)

This story was tracked back to my weekend linkfest, but it is IMPORTANT enough to get a separate mention here:

Why is Abu Ghraib a cover story again, but not Darfur?. The shalowness of Mass Media Podpeople (and their hypocrisy) is not the only thing this reveals. Why am I not blogging on this more? Yeh, I mention Darfur here and in comments on other blogs, but why have I not devoted regular posts to Darfur?

Maybe more than just the Mass Media Podpeople’s Army need some self-examination, eh?

And last but certainly not least, That Great Sucking Sound:

Migrants Rush to Border Hoping for Passage

Who’d a thunk it? An “amnesty” bill for invaders in Congress encouraging more invaders to come? Who could imagine such an effect!! Why, it’s almost as if Congress mwere erecting an “attractive nuisance” to entice the poor criminals to break our laws!

(And it’s almost as if I could imagine congresscritters standing trial for treason and being “hung by the neck until dead” when convicted. The only problem? Sweeping the sewers to find a jury of their peers… )

I wonder what Ferdy might make of the co-orbiting black holes? (Probably wonder if there were any cheese sticks available there, eh?)

Posted on

Jean Fraud sKerry MIA, again… /Open Post

MIA=”Milling in (the) air”… sKerry, who has yet to make good on any of his promises to actually release the records he has serially “promised” to release, is playinhg weathervane again. The Junior Whiner from Taxachussetts has, with his recent demand that the U.S. issue an ultimatum to the Iraqi government with a timetable for U.S. pullout, directly reversed his former statements that asserted such a timetable would be a “disgraceful betrayal of principle” and a “disaster”.

*yawn*

A non-news event for anyone familiar with this blowhard’s inability to hold to any principle save one (that beiing the principle that he can say anything and get away with it, because the electorate of Massachussetts is simply too gullible to be able to tell when he’s lying [hint: words are issuing from him] or too corrupt to care).

No news. Move right along folks. Nothing to see here. After all, there aren’t even any records to read, yet.

No More B.S.

This is an Open Post. Link to this post and track back.

Also note the other fine blogs featuring linkfests at Linkfest Haven.

Linkfest Haven

Posted on

Rainy Days and Mondays

Right-thinking people are losing the war of the mind. I almost didn’t type those words, because “right-thinking” is a term despised by nearly everyone nowadays as elitist, judgmental or as having overtones of elitism that are to be avoided in persuasive speech. Determining what is right and wrong is simply wrong for anyone… except the media, academic or political elite. And even then, if one strays from the path of philosophical correctness, a pronouncement of (purely non-judgmental, dontcha know!) anathema is bound to fall on one’s head from those so-called liberal elites.

And because the media and academia seem to think with one hive mind, we all know the vocabulary we must use in public speech.

“Gay” no longer means “happy, carefree,” but “nuerotic, angry homosexuals.”

“Liberal” no longer means “seeking to increase or protect freedom and basic human rights” but, on the one hand, “tyrannical limitation of personal freedoms via micromanagement by a nanny state” and “encouragement of lawlessness and anarchy by irresponsible citizens (and foreign invaders)” on the other. The latter function of modern faux liberalism is, of course, planned to increase the legitimacy of the former. Let’s see now… what would be a shorter definition of modern faux liberalism? Oh, yes: a Soviet (or Chinese) style communism, complete with an elite copied directly from Animal Farm (where some animals are clearly more equal than others… ).

In media/academia speak, “Undocumented Workers” ir “Illegal aliens”=”Invaders, ‘Reconquistadores'” or just plain “criminals” if we translate the terminology into right (as in correct, corresponding to reality) thinking.

And of course, these are just the most obvious examples. And Mass Media Podpeople newsreaders Political Poltroons and Academia Nuts are really the least of the propagandizers.

Huh?

Right.

Make yourself watch an evening of MTV analytically. Or do the same with any network or cable TV channel. Heck, watch The History Channel analytically. In any and all of those examples, among the many, many media outlets I could cite from Hollyweird to Nashville and on, what we generally view as harmless entertainment is framing our references.

Think about it. The popular entertainment culture we are embedded in is defining the terms, building the box we think in. It doesn’t determine how we think, necessarily, but it does limit our vocabulary, the concepts we have to manipulate and express to others. From pop music to sitcoms to pop-historical pap (on the History Channel and elsewhere), we and everyone around us are daily fed a melange of concepts, much of which is garbage at best, and poison at worst.

Just try this for a week: watch or listen to mass media pop culture offerings critically, analytically, looking for lies, distortions, corruptions of sound thinking, ethics or morality. “Oh, but that sitcom’s so funny! Surely it’s harmless?” or “That song’s really [moving/ beautiful/ fun to dance to]; so what if the lyrics are [violent/ disrespectful of women/ promoting immoral-unethical behavior, etc.]?”

Right. And an army of ants eats the elephant, a tiny bite at a time.

And as we allow the concepts of a mass media pop culture to seep into our own hindbrains uncritically, without thinking about the contents, we participate in our own destruction.

Oh, well, Rainy Days and Mondays Always Get me Down.

heh

X-Posted at The Wide Awakes

Posted on

Guard the Borders

From Heidi, of Euphoric Reality,

“This week’s Blogburst was written by Darnell McGavock at the Independent Conservative. He examines the advantages to businesses that exploit illegal labor and compares it to the economic system of slavery. It is a perspective we’ve never examined before at GTB. Thank you, Darnell, for a provocative post!”

by Darnell MaGavock at Indpendent Conservative

Let me start by saying I don’t endorse either slavery or illegal immigration. But looking at things from the economic standpoint of a company that hires illegals today versus the use of slave labor in the 18th and 19th centuries, illegal immigration offers companies a better deal than any slave owner ever had. The reason is the modern day welfare state that is known as America.

Continue reading “Guard the Borders”