Day: June 11, 2011

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Beating a Dead Horse

From the WaPo a few years ago (a 2006 repeat of a 2005 report), based on the 2003 Adult Literacy Survey by the DoE:

Experts Stunned – Literacy of US College Grads Declining

“The declining impact of education on our adult population was the biggest surprise for us, and we just don’t have a good explanation,” said Mark S. Schneider, commissioner of education statistics. “It may be that institutions have not yet figured out how to teach a whole generation of students who learned to read on the computer and who watch more TV. It’s a different kind of literacy.”

“What’s disturbing is that the assessment is not designed to test your understanding of Proust, but to test your ability to read labels,” he added.

Yep, reading and understanding “labels” was about what the “proficient” level denoted. Sad. That’s “proficient”? Hardly.

*sigh*

Of course, this article from the Georgia State University student newspaper notes a couple of things most of the educrats (they’re all very naturally baffled, the idiots) who’ve commented on the situation have missed. First, more and more illiterate sluggards are getting into colleges, having graduated high school with the reading skills of gerbils. And then this:

“…perhaps the failure lies in the lack of support for library services in schools in the United states, where the first place for funding and staff cuts is the school library.”

Well, there is a wide and deep constellation of other contributing causes, but what the student writer noted here is a fact of pubschool life.

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Here’s a Suggestion for Weiner’s “Rehab”

“News” of the “who cares what his latest ploy is” variety:

Weiner seeking treatment amid growing pressure to resign

While the New York congressman seeks treatment at an undisclosed location, he will take a “short leave of absence” from Congress, Risa Heller said in a statement.

A Democratic source, familiar with conversations among Weiner and Democratic leadership about his fate, did not know what specific type of treatment Weiner would undergo.

What “type of treatment”? Frankly, I’m thinking his treatment should follow a line from an old Cheech and Chong bit, “Bailiff! Whack his pee-pee!” *heh*

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Let’s Go “Precautionary Principle” All Over Some Greenie A**

Yeh. Greenies invoke their sacred “precautionary principle” to kill economies, kill people (think Rachel Carson’s utterly dishonest scam to kill people via malaria, et al by getting DDT banned)–as long as they’re little brown people in far away places–and shut down energy production, attempting to send mankind back to the stone age. F’n idiots. F’n malicious, toxic, evil idiots.

So, let’s exercise some “precautionary principle” all over some greenie a**:

Dead bodies demand organic food moratorium

Right now, someone nearby is buying organic bean sprouts. It may be the last thing he ever does. Last week’s E. coli outbreak in Germany – potentially traced to an organic farm – was more deadly than the largest nuclear disaster of the last quarter-century.

Indeed, in the past two years, two public safety stories have dominated global news headlines – an explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and a nuclear power plant meltdown in Japan. Yet in the recent German organic-food-disease outbreak, nearly twice as many people already have died as in the two other industrial disasters combined.

And that’s why I eat only food treated by poisons and irradiation to kill bugs and bacteria. It’s safer and thus better for me.

“Organic”* farming is now proven to be more dangerous than a nuclear disaster caused by the most powerful earthquake in recorded history followed by a massive tsunami… Therefore, following the “precautionary principle” so beloved to greenie weenies, “organic”* farming should be banned.

*”Organic” used as a neologism (ca. 1940s?) to denote foods grown without the use of “artificial” fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides is an especially stupid term. “Organic” compounds are hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons are organic. Take any hydrocarbon molecular chain: it’s organic. Period. Most man-made pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers are… organic, except in the illiterate use of the word promoted by J.I. Rodale and his groupies. BTW, Rodale was born a few years later than my grandparents, all of whom ate normally-produced food, not Rodale’s “organic” crap, all their lives… and passed away, after long, productive and mostly healthy lives, a decade or more later than the Prevention “organic” health guru Rodale.

*feh*

I’m darned near positive it was all the chemicals in their food that prolonged their lives. Heck, their bodies probably didn’t even need embalming. 🙂