That’s what this professor from my alma mater thinks it will take to do a mission to Mars.
I obviously disagree, not that I’m that big a fan of Mars missions. I’m always disappointed at whom the press thinks is an expert on space policy. At least he’s an engineering professor, and not a “scientist.”
That’s how much additional debt the nation has amassed since the Senate last passed a budget:
If you want a sense of just how massive the nation’s debt problem is, consider this: The U.S. added $226 billion in new debt in just the 35 days since President Obama missed the legal deadline to submit his budget.
That’s more than the government will spend this year on education, homeland security, law enforcement, housing aid, energy and the environment, combined.
A 1921 law requires the president to submit his budget plan to Congress on the first Monday in February, but Obama so far hasn’t produced one, and the White House says it won’t release its plan to get the nation’s deficits and debt under control until sometime in April.
Laws are for the little people. Hey, did I mention that the Senate was controlled by the Democrats that whole time?
Is the fact that the majority of children in public schools are not learning to read malice, or incompetence?
Now, I realize that an illiterate peasantry is needed for a proper neo-feudal regime, but I wonder how many of these people are actually malicious, and how many are just full of their own self-importance and convinced that they are doing what is best for these children?
Judging by those I dealt with, most of them aren’t bright enough to see any overarching social aims in this. They are simply full of their own “good intentions” and they’ve been TAUGHT this is the best way of teaching to read. In fact, if you push them they become either irate or lachrymose and tell you that you don’t UNDERSTAND, you’re not an expert and you weren’t taught the latest METHODS. (This reminds me of when we stayed in NYC in a new hotel and every night our bed was, essentially, short sheeted – it’s more complicated than that, but that was the effect. When we complained the maid, with an accent stronger than mine, informed us it was “latest, Russian bed-making technology. … that one too didn’t end well, at least as soon as I stopped rolling on the floor laughing.)
Dave, yesterday, made a comment that the public school system for all its flaws might teach a kid to read who would otherwise not know how. Since I don’t know every teacher in every corner of the US – but I know from other contexts that at least some of them will be decent and competent and tell the system to stuff it – nor every kid, nor every school, this is POSSIBLE. What I guarantee and would put my hands in the fire for is that the percentage of those is dwarfed by the MASS of what would otherwise be competent “middle brow” C students, who could read and express themselves passably in writing, if they were left alone/had online teachers with just a class supervisor/were taught by anyone (retirees? Mothers?) BUT people who had been convinced they were education experts and that teaching children to read – something that village teachers managed for centuries. (And BTW my first village teacher was a discarded fallen woman, whom some guy had seduced and set up in a little cottage with no running water and only two rooms. She was, it was rumored “of good families” and left with no other means of support, taught the kids to read and fancy work (needlework, guys!) to the girls and died respected and almost revered in her eighties.)
But whether it’s from malice or misguided credentialism and do-goodism, what I can tell you is that our system of education is accomplishing the “miracle” of turning out a population MORE illiterate than the poor never-taught people in Tudor England.
Malice or incompetence, it comes to the same. If you have kids in the system, look to their future. If they read by “guessing” (the signs are easy. They’ll think words that start and end with the same letter are the same) stop that right now and teach them to sound it out. They’ll hate you for a month, but the hatred will pass and the literacy will remain.
Always remember J. Porter Clark’s law: any sufficiently advanced cluelessness is indistinguishable from malice. (I think it was originally prompted by spammers.)
Over thirty years ago, a report on public education started out with words to the effect (if not literally — it may have) that if some foreign power had imposed on us the educational system with which we’ve afflicted ourselves, it would rightly be considered an act of war. If anything, it’s gotten worse.
Gee, Jason Rhian seems to be trolling his own web site.
That’s quite the list of straw men.
This sort of stupidity is on a par with calling it an “insurance policy.” Dana has it right:
Last year’s request for this “back-up system” was more than 300% of the appropriated level of the primary system. By acting on this type of faulty logic, we have created a national debt as large as our GDP and still our nation refuses to take its foot off the deficit spending accelerator. SLS is unaffordable, and with relatively modest expenditures on specific technology development, we do not need a heavy lift vehicle of that class to explore the Moon, Mars, or near-Earth asteroids.”
Of course, it has nothing to do with “exploring” any of those places. It’s pork and workforce preservation.
Wow, is this article a nutritionally ignorant mess.
I find it not at all surprising that ancient Egyptians suffered from heart disease. We already knew that they had diabetes. Both are caused by a diet heavy in grains.
The assumption that eating fatty foods is the problem is just typical lipidophobia. And I didn’t think that smoking hardened arteries — I just thought that nicotine constricted them.
What is puzzling, though, is the Aleutian hunters. I wonder what their diet was? I’d have thought it similar to Inuit, who despite their high intake of blubber, didn’t have any significant diabetes or coronary disease until they started eating imported flour and sugar.
[Update a while later]
Living to be a sesquicentennarian through super resveratrol. That would be great. It would put my mid-life crisis about a decade and a half ahead of me, instead of behind.
They’re not very green. All they do is move the emissions to a different location.
The electric car might be great in a couple of decades but as a way to tackle global warming now it does virtually nothing. The real challenge is to get green energy that is cheaper than fossil fuels. That requires heavy investment in green research and development. Spending instead on subsidizing electric cars is putting the cart before the horse, and an inconvenient and expensive cart at that.
It’s not about the economics. It’s about feelings, which are of course the highest value.
Frank J., in an unusually (for him) mostly serious essay, says that it’s time for a divorce. This has long been the libertarian position. Leave marriage to the churches, and let people make their own contracts.
That vast constituency that is apparently the last hope of those who would disarm us.
[Update a few minutes later]
(Astronaut) Mark Kelly, federal gun criminal?
I believe he probably bought the AR for his own protection for the same reason I bought mine. He didn’t expect to be caught doing it. Now, it appears, he says his intentions were to give it to Tucson PD from the beginning. The local prosecutor needs to get involved. When Mr. Kelly completed ATF Form 4473, which he had to do to legally buy the weapon, he had to answer question 11.a, which says “Are you the actual transferee/buyer of the firearm(s) listed on this from? Warning: You are not the actual buyer if you are acquiring the firearm(s) on behalf of another person. If you are not the actual buyer, the dealer cannot transfer the firearm(s) to you.” If he had answered no to this question, which he now claims was his intent all along. He would have been denied. Additionally when he signed the form at the bottom of Section A, he did so bellow the following in bold face type. “I certify that my answers to Section A are true, correct, and complete. I have read and understand the Notices, Instructions, and Definitions on ATF Form 4473. I understand that answering “yes” to question 11.a. if I am not the actual buyer is a crime punishable as a felony under Federal law…etc.” It doesn’t matter, as he now claims, whether he intended to give the weapon to law enforcement or the Pope, straw purchases are illegal and by his own statement Mr. Kelly appears to have committed a felony.
This could end up being delicious, if the local federal attorney investigates. But of course, working for Eric Holder, he won’t.
FWIW, I don’t believe him. As the commenter says, he bought the gun because he wanted it, and thought no one would notice. He’s becoming a Sarah Brady, with more hypocrisy.