ivan

bad book, but a fine fire-starter - for years i've kept one in the bathroom as emergency reading and/or ass-wiping material i loved the days the gideon's descended on my college w/ their free samples - i usualy collected at least a brace, and had a sweet little bonfire after i finished my russian homework still not as cool as the occasions when the local lunatic installed himself on the lawn w/ his 10 foot cross, thorn crown and crazy-eyed family who all screeched at us about how we were all going to hell

Are you the majority? more importantly, what's to misunderstand about a poorly written, massively boring, 2000+ year old work of at first psycho-violent, then wierdly wimpy fiction?

my experience after a decade is that kids, via their parents, run a hell of a lot already hey, i'm a survivalist creature - whatever changes come, i'll adapt and overcome - i don't think most folks have a clear idea of what makes a "good teacher" or has a sensible way of measuring one, but then i also think teaching is far more an art than science - i do know that most private schools offer total crap for pay and benefits though, so am not really very hopeful that suddenly having a lot more out there would improve the finanicial part of my life christ i'm tired - it's naptime!

"i don't believe in beatles, i just believe in me"

as i said, i'm not radically opposed to vouchers, but i don't think they're going to solve any of the basic problems of educating the children of 300 million americans what about economies of scale? seems like tearing down the big old factory to build a whole bunch of smaller ones increases waste/inefficiency?

i have no idea how the pay system would differ - will i be getting paid by how many students i attract? - if so, then i'm basically just gonna get paid for my services as an entertainer and awarder of easy grades, right? how many kids are gonna want to throw their money in to a hard-driving prick who makes you do homework and what not?

anyone notice how our evolution discussions here at the cc.com spray cockpit really haven't evolved much?

i don't see this at all - the price tag for a high-faluting private school is way higher than for a public school - sure, give families the amount they threw into the common pot for education back to them to spend how they will, but it's not gonna get poor kids into anything better than what they left. it might make middle class families just capable of affording a posh school by throwing in extra on top of the voucher, but i doubt it.

dude, an angry mayan god's gonna kill us all in 2012 anyway, didn't you get the memo?

the GAO report on the washington d.c. experiment doesn't seem to think so

yes to the first question as to the second question, i don't like any of the tax exemption bullshit that churches get, though i know the court has upheld it. tax exempt donations to charities is fine, but not charities who wrap it up in buddha/jeebus/mohammed whatever. it's probably just my angry atheism talking i don't know anything of sweden or norway's voucher experiment - enlighten me, if you can in a 1000 words or less - is comparing our giant heterogenous nation to a tiny homogenous one sound? wouldn't the transition to a voucher system dangerously destabilize the current public schools? schools and the infrastructure already built were designed for large populations which could only decline. future planning would be harder w/ potentially giant #'s of students coming in and out of the system.

Guess you'll be at the Icefest then? the world is my oyster - well, a 50 mile radius around my house is my oyster

ya'll gonna if i don't show? no one i know in pdx-land is making the trek and i'm stupid broke at the moment

Seems like the problem for teachers is monopsony, which is the opposite of monopoly. Eg, monopsony = one and only one buyer, which distorts prices and suffocates competition just as effectively as having a single seller. It's puzzling to me that so many teachers are vehemently opposed to reforms to vouchers, since competition for children would also foster competition for teachers, and likely foster the development of compensation models that'd allow teachers to capture more of the revenue, have more discretion over curriculum, pedagogy, etc. how is there not already competition in education? you can go to private schools - you can move to another public school district - you can home school. there's a first amendment problem w/ many private schools as they're religious in nature.

that's just above flight time Y-roof - fuckit, whatever it is, it's in the arena of doom and i ain't ever going back into that fuckign thing!

? you're saying that the left has a monopoly on hate? ok.

i don't know that i understand this, but please explain to me how killing rush limbaugh at any time would have made the world a better place rush filled a vacuom, and it is the latter that is the problem, not the former - rush is powerful b/c idiots give him power - our narrowminded coutnrymen who get their jollies off him could jsut have easily crowned another apostle of hate, and will too, when he's gone - rush is the flower, the millions of red-blooded conservatives are the roots - if you're gonna kill your way out of this problem, be ready to be like robespierre. i assume you know how that went? See "strategic mistake" post above. i read that - what i'm saying is, how would killing him in the womb, terminator-style, make anything better? rush didn't create the hate, the hate created rush. you can kill rush (and if you had a time machine, long ago before he was anybody). you can't kill hate, in fact killing generally just feeds hate, no?

Come on, Ivan, use your head. When has gov't EVER controlled its spending? When things get too expensive, they just increase taxes to cover the new "expense". Think of it this way - gov't run insurance is not competitive precisely because they can charge "under cost" untill "competitors" are out of business. But really, they don't charge "under cost" because they cover those costs through taxes taken elsewhere (or borrowing it and running bigger deficits). And there is another aspect to undermine "competitiveness" depending on how the gov't insurance is paid for. If it is paid by taxing businesses or adding a payroll tax then business and employees who ALREADY have coverage will be paying extra for nothing and there will be an unfair non-competitive aspect to drive people and businesses toward the public option precisely to avoid the burden of double paying. i remember goverment controlling its spending just fine in the 90s when we ran a surplus, and for the vast majority of its history our government lived entirely w/n its means i don't follow your rationale either - why didn't the post office and public universities destroy their competition by charging under cost? as i said, the private alternatives to the public ones there are plenty healthy. i agree that potential double-dipping on businesses would be a problem, but businesses shouldn't be paying for health insurance anyway - it's a stupid model, espeically in a society where folks are skipping around from job to job a lot, or in an economy where people can't find employers who even offer health insurance.

i don't know that i understand this, but please explain to me how killing rush limbaugh at any time would have made the world a better place rush filled a vacuom, and it is the latter that is the problem, not the former - rush is powerful b/c idiots give him power - our narrowminded coutnrymen who get their jollies off him could jsut have easily crowned another apostle of hate, and will too, when he's gone - rush is the flower, the millions of red-blooded conservatives are the roots - if you're gonna kill your way out of this problem, be ready to be like robespierre. i assume you know how that went?

americans don't like euro-fags, so i'm thinking were fucked don't worry, tvashie, you'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes!

it's been led as an aid climb, ground up Is that a no? the route is clean, yes. only a portion of it was cleaned on rap (it's a big traverse after the first 30 feet of overhang, so ground up cleaning was easiest - the gaint blocks had to be got at from above though unless you had a death wish ) i would not be surprised if my definition of clean is differnet from the pure free climber's though - the middle section of the route is a bit loose, but that's just the nature of the rock there and prying away at all of it wouldn't do much more than ruin some of the gear placements

unlimited support for the post office has niether driven ups or fedex out of business nor increased their prices (fuel costs sure have though) state support for public universities and secondary schools has not driven private universities out of existence or ruined their quality (and, on that topic, there are no small # of excellent public schools out there, so the gov can do some shit right, yes?) furthermore, medicaid/medicare have not been hopeless fuck ups propped up by endless taxes speaking of propping up hopeless causes w/ endless taxes though, how's that afghanistan thing coming along? supposedly iraq's fine now too, so we can leave, right?

it's been led as an aid climb, ground up, w/ the exception of rapping in to pry out several atom-bomb sized rocks that stopped the original party god know's how long ago i'm less certain now of the bush you speak of joe - certianly any vegation that is problematic to an aid climber is gone

here's a question i've not heard even a BS answer to: if all the folks on the right are so convinced that the governemtn is a bunch of fuck-ups incapable of doing anything right, why are they afraid that a private insurance company wouldn't be able to compete w/ a government run one? it'll be just like the post office right, so everyone will use the UPS equiavalent right?

and satan wacking j.c. before he could fit into the adult sized bathrobe woula been wise too there is no problem you're gonna kill your way out - marat and robespierrre, extremist libtards of a long-gone era and land, certainly proved that extremism is the enemy, whatever flavor it chooses to come in