Yesterday Was “Working Naked Day”
*sigh* How did I miss getting the skinny on this one?
Effecting Subliteracy, One Headline at a Time
Headline on local weather report:
Weather Effecting Superbowl
Really?
When “effect” is used as a verb, it means “cause something to happen” so that headline-written-by-an-idiot means, “Weather Causing Superbowl”.
Of course, the idiot who wrote that meant “Weather Affecting Superbowl” but, because he* is a subliterate idiot, apparently working for and with other subliterate idiots, that headline made it onto a local weather report.
Insert fork, twirl in brain.
*Yes, I eschew the “he or she” or “s/he” or whatever current abortion of good English is in current vogue in favor of the long usage of “he” to mean a non-specific person. I have little time or energy (and no respect) for that politically correct crap.
Pay Attention: Our Society Has Already Failed The Test Once….
“What is so Special about the 30 Year Mortgage” by Peter Williams in today’s [Feb 1, 2011] Wall Street Journal dispels some myths and raises interesting questions. The United States has for a long time encouraged people to buy their homes. This is a good idea: rule by the middle class, ‘those who possess the goods of fortune in moderation’ (Aristotle) requires that there be a middle class, and that they have property. Alas, the implementation did not leave them much of a property stake. People who owe more than the property is worth not only do not own property, but have a strong motive to shed themselves of the very idea that they ever owned it. The long time mortgages with low down payments do not build property ownerships.
Now, our home is paid for. Was a fifteen year mortgage to begin with, and we had EVERY intention of making it wholly ours from the beginning. Paid it off early. And when we bought, we bought a home that was less than we could have gotten, deliberately. Indeed, we’ve mostly, for quite some time now, made it a practice, in general, to live under our means, providing a greater cushion for emergencies and potential income losses or other changes of circumstances.
Major purchases, other than this house–cars, appliances, electronics, whatever: saved for and paid for in cash or cash equivalent (check or debit card).
“[T]he goods of fortune in moderation” is key to a solid middle class, and a solid middle class is even key to long-term wealth for the putative upper class, for without such a middle class, the means to assure long-term wealth become shaky in a republic. Of course, our republic is trending toward an oligarchy (rule by an elite) with a veneer of democracy (rule by mob), and the oligarchs seem to have little interest in even their own grandchildren’s future, “planning” ahead only so far as their next short-term “killing”.
Well, as usual I’ve wandered off the reservation a bit. *heh* Pournelle’s original comment, and his recommended reading material (I fixed his link to point to a non-registration reproduction of the article) are worth reading.
What’s the Matter With Kids Today?
*heh*
Okay, so my topic’s not the same as the Bye Bye Birdie tune’s. Here’s a switcheroo. A recent (well, 2007) book on school reform and what can go dreadfully wrong with reform efforts had one comment that made me hoot til I almost cried. “Oh, what was it?” you ask. Praising the intent of the “New Math” era and how it breathed life into Math curriculum.
Yeh, right. If anything were deliberately designed to wreck budding students’ interest in or understanding of math, it was New Math. Either it was a conspiracy of evil persons to completely screw kids up or it was a conspiracy of dunces who were too stupid for words… completely screwing kids up. That is, if their “intent” was good, the people who designed and implemented “new math” were monumentally stupid people.
4th Grade: “new math” screwed me up so badly, it wasn’t until I had a high school geometry teacher who was teaching just for the joy of it (her family was in Big Bucks City) that my head started to come unscrewed from “new math” so the threads could be reworked and I could have the thing screwed on right (as to math). From there, calculus, stat, whatever, was fun.
What’s the matter with kids today? A lot of it is remote educrats having screwed up public education for decades (with the complicity of lazy, dumbed down by their own school years, parents and stupid, compliant pubschool administrators).
[great story excised to protect the innocent]
Asshats.