ivan

wait...you climb? what's wrong w/ rubber-necking anyhow? jesus, so long as yer going 5 miles an hour on the interstate...

why in the fuck do we need more ships in the navy again? and wtf does a simple comparision of ship #'s across the ages even mean? pretty certain every naval vessel in the world in 1776 combined couldn't take out a single nimitz-class aircraft carrier

encouraging! if nothing else, trump is famous for big failures

all the cool people have climbed the nose

cheeeerist, yer dialect translation is more fucked than twain's ... jay is certainly right in that white flight is nothing new - i don't see why that making it easier is a good idea today though - the fight to integrate public schools was so critically a part of the history of last century that it seems mighty illogical to give up on it now - jay is a pretty big fan of the enlightenment too, so i'd hope that argument would have some weight w/ him i teach in a very prosperous district now, but used to teach in an incredibly different one, back east, where 100% of the school was free/reduced lunch, most of my kids from one-parent/no-parent homes - my school was a tight-run ship, did quite well by most academic metrics, but there were other schools in the same district that were fucking disasters - from what i could see, the biggest difference was administrators, not teachers - schools w/ huge challenges in terms of crime, poverty, drugs, etc need really special principals and assistant principals to lay down the law on the street and win the hearts n' minds of a cynical student body - regardless, the vast majority of factors that determine a school's success/failure are pretty far removed from anyone in that school's control, and i don't see how that gets improved by introducing more competition via vouchers

scandero ergo sum

here's a fun triva question for you! who was leonidas' wife and how did they meet?

How is any of that going to remedy the misery of being raped in the ass? by: a) killing the miserable b) moving the miserable someplace where shit is better and c) reducing the number of future people who will be miserable (ancient greece had strong traditions of infanticide and homosexuality, likely evolved behaviors to cope w/ the regions chronic food and population pressures) i would hope you can appreciate a measure of sarcasm in spray - after all, some of my best friends are....are...are...not really greek (but they've been there!)

jeebus, never heard about that - what an asshole! would love to do the 10k actually w/ another human being, though i don't think a single lap gets you more than 500 feet max, so that'd be 20 laps, which boggles my mind, solo or not

Bring Your Own Helicopter!

:[]

time for the traditional greek remedies to misery: massacre, immigration and sodomy!

it still seems like magic to me that, with the amount to be spent on education fixed, dividing it up and making it portable for each patron results in everything getting groovier. instead of having one well funded school, don't you just end up w/ 2 half-funded ones? don't you lose the economies of scales you get from a single school? won't private schools, funded by vouchers, be able to cherry-pick the kids they want, leaving the dregs to the public school? why assume charter schools will appear in areas that public schools are struggling in? will parents in low income/high unemployment areas really be able to get their kids to the other side of town to the private school they have a voucher for? my opposition isn't vehement at the moment. my initial scepticism, as said given the source of the idea, is just that of a fish who's seen juicy worms often hiding hooks.

jesus, don't you guys get it!?! cc.retards are only supposed to COMPLAIN about problems, not actually go out and try to fix them... trail work being done down at beacon rock this saturday if ya'll didn't get yer fill - nothing funner than waging war on poison oak

right around now - late cocktober.

"god does not throw dice!" awww, albert, don't worry! i'dve nailed my cousin too if i coulda

a great read for such folks (you'd dig it too pat, despite the author's credentials) is "misquoting jesus" by bart ehrman - he's a radical born-again christian turned biblical scholar who, through the process of actually learning all those dead-languages and grappling w/ the oldest surviving texts (he's a phd from a dog-fearing theological school), became far more liberal in his philosophy - the book is an extremely detailed and interesting history of the evolution of the new testament as an historic document, including many examples of instances where profound theological debates amongst early christians resulted in topically slight, but philosophically significant, alterations in the accepted text.

i'm a high school social studies/humanities teacher, a grade level and subject that has the greatest leeway for individualism i think - elementary and math/science folks seem far more pressured to be in lock-step w/ each other

i understand big time - my wife and have been so unsatisfied w/ our local options that we're homeschooling our kids (it's the special ed thing in particular, schools just really don't handle atypical kids well) - i would also say that my methodology w/ my subject is very non-standard - i build my own curriculum entirely and have almost zero use for my district-issued textbook - ironically, this push for tougher evaluation systems is seriously threatening to the iconoclastic approach, which puts huge pressure to conform and be like everybody else

maybe? i admit, as my drunken OP showed last night, i've yet to educate meself on this specific initiative before voting (got a votenight/datenight set for next weekend though ) - my own district is currently trying to figure out to offer more specific satellite courses and maybe charter schools could fit into that? in theory though, it just seems like it creates more admin and more admin costs while still dealing w/ the same # of kids and cash

would love to spray more on the topic at the moment, but a stack of papers literally a foot high await me - here's to an afternoon of my brood buzzing about me as i was through it all! whatchaya'll doing w/ yer sabbath day?

jeebus, dave, for a guy who don't dig on trashie, you sure took to his multi-post style w/ a passion! having to argue why you don't believe in an all-powerful n' invisible man in the sky who loves you when daily a million n' one frights afflict you is the very height of absurdity

my bible's better 'cuz it's cheekier!

w/ respect, i don't think you know what you're talking about - i'm an active union member, and, if anything, our union is pretty damn weak w/ the vast # of members really not involved at all (a microcosm of the larger political landscape, no?) - my own participation as a member involves working w/ administrators throughout my district, and all w/ the main idea of serving the kids, not just maintaining a status quo - an example from this year: implementing a new state-wide evaluation system for both teachers and principals that was created by the legislature in part to address the concerns of the states citizens that "bad teachers" aren't being weeded out (i volunteered to be a guinea pig for the pilot year to help work out the bugs, and the active members of the union were very involved to help form the bill in the first place, despite the unease that the general membership inevitably felt, as all humans do, in the face of change) i don't complain much about the lack of prestige or remuneration that accompanies the profession, b/c i went into it eyes wide shut n' never had strong aspirations for such anyhow - the bottom line is though, if you want to attract huge numbers of exceptional people into the profession, you're probably going to have to make it more attractive (and no matter how much you pay, it's hard to get people to survive the stress of the first few years - jesus, go try it sometime! your memory of school of course is from the students' perspective - holy shit it's different when having to perform over n' over in front of 150 or so folks a day, constantly under the gun, dealing w/ a gazillion different challenges, all on the fly, and often inexplicably involved and entangled in one another) just defining "good teacher" and "good school" is a sisyphean task, one that is highly variably by kid, community and subject the public perception is that most teachers are dipshit deadbeats - i'm approaching 2 decades in the profession now, and while i HAVE known a few folks that fit that description, they represent a tiny minority of the total, probably about the same in any other industry what do you think unions have really gotten in the way of that would have made all the difference?

speaking of atheists, i like walt whitman: "and to die is far different than what anyone ever supposed, and luckier"