How to fix Schooling

Step 1: Cut funding for all afterschool /extracuricular activities. It sounds harse, but funds for these activitys arn't exactly fairly divied up.  Students/Staff may continue this programs through heavy use of fundraisers. (Which frankly build much more charactor and work ethic then the actual activitys)

Step 2: Rethink the school Day. There are 6 periods (at least there was) when I went to school. It worked fairly well but the subjects just don't matter anymore.

• Give the students ONE period per day for a extracuricular activitys. Any additional activitys can be done after school.
• Math/Science:  Not everyone needs biology and chemestry. Instead merge basic science in with Math.  Math and Science go hand in hand and should be taught together anyways. Put Emphasis on the Scientific Process, and using Math to solve real problems. For Math/Science Geeks, Offer a 2 Period Math/Science Course that would eat up their Elective period.
•  Work Skills: Every student should be taught how to do research, create reports in Office, work a fax machine, present a resume and do an interview, the fundementals of profit and loss, ect. At higher grades, students should be able to pick between office skill classes, trade classes, computer classes, science classes ect.
• Logic/Philosophy/Litature. By far the most important of things school can teach you, logic and critical reading skills are being left out untill College. Throw out the traditional english classes and refocus on Critical Reading Skills, Logic and Philosophy. Obviously grammar and vocabulary needs to be taught, but less Poe and more Socrates is needed.
• History: I personally belive that History is the pasts lessons to us. It's critical as a society that we learn whats come before, but the way it;'s taught today is ALL wrong. The focus is on wars and names and dates, when the important stuff is the STORYS behind the dates and the wars. History Books should read like literature, otherwise they have no real value.  How many students learn as much about Hitlers motivations as his actions?
• Economics/Goverment: 12 years of how the goverment and our economy work. Students should know their Miranda rights by heart, how to break a Philibuster ion either house, order of inheritance if presedent dies, how a Supreme Court Judge is approved, ect ect ect. Ignorance of these things create a slave people.

School board cancels prom rather then allow lesbian couple to attend.

Jackson, Miss - I was flabbergasted today when I saw this on yahoo news.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100312/ap_on_re_us/us_lesbian_prom_date

Apparently rather then allow a couple of girls attend the prom like everyone else, their school decided it was best to simply cancel the prom.

Now the girls are getting blamed for it.

No matter how you feal about homosexuality, if is my fondest hope that EVERYONE understands the basic premise that all people diserve equal treatment and rights.  I hope it is understood and held self-evident that it is not the role of goverment to decide or requlate values.

That being said, the school board is holding the prom hostage just because THEY don't like values represented by the girls relationship.  It's not just the prom they are weilding against these girls, but all the social pressure that it's loss is bringing down apon their heads. This is a clear act of blackmail in broad daylight.

The board has overstepped their authority and are exceeding their role. 

Worse, they are "hopeing" that someone will host a private prom to replace the public one. Should this happen,  whomever hosted the prom could legally discriminate any way they choose. Given the host would likely be one of the towns wealth conservatives, it is unlikely the girls would be included.

 

Common Sense Failures

I loath to think these might be true. I hope they're not.

"A bicyclist crossing an airport runway in Sorocaba, Sao Paulo, was killed when he was hit by a landing airplain. Marcelo Dias dos Santos, 25, could not hear the plane coming because he was listening on his Walkman on headphones, investigators said."

"Wayne Roth, 38, of Pittston, was bitten by a cobra belonging to his friend, Roger Croteau, after playfully reaching into the tank and picking up the snake. Wayne subsequently refused to go to a hospital, telling Roger, "I'm a man, I can handle it.

Falser Words have seldom been spoken. Instead of a hospital, Wayne reported to a bar. He had three drinks, and enjoyed bragging that he had just been bitten by a cobra. Cobra venom is a slow-acting central nervious system toxin. He died within a few hours, in Jenkins Township, Pennsylvania."

Farm Subsidys are making YOU fat.

Welcome to my latest pet pieve. Farm subsities. ^.^ A little background:
Stolen from Wikipedia ^.^

An agricultural subsidy is a governmental subsidy paid to farmers and agribusinesses to supplement their income, manage the supply of agricultural commodities, and influence the cost and supply of such commodities. Examples of such commodities include wheat, feed grains (grain used as fodder, such as maize, sorghum, barley, and oats), cotton, milk, rice, peanuts, sugar, tobacco, and oilseeds such as soybeans.

Some subsidies are positive - that is money is paid for increased production, while other subsidies are negative where tax revenues are given to farmers in exchange for not growing a particular commodity. Tobacco farmers in the U.S. state of North Carolina, for example, have recently been awarded tax-funds in exchange for not growing tobacco.

I'm not going to quote all of Wikipedia, but you can read more if you like.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy

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Essentually, our goverment is in the bussiness of price fixing. We spend a average of 16 billion a year makeing sure that certain comoditys maintain a "minimum" price. The theory being, to help farmers. The problem is, it's not going to small impoverished farmers anymore.

"Direct payment subsidies are provided without regard to the economic need of the recipients or the financial condition of the farm economy. Established in 1996, direct payments were originally meant to wean farmers off traditional subsidies that are triggered during periods of low prices for corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton, rice, and other crops."

Payouts are lopsided, with 1% of the farming comunity getting 17% of the subsitys. Part of that problem is that over the last 40 years farms have been consolidating into larger farms, owned by large firms instead of a family of farmers.

In the 1930s, about 25% of the country's population resided on the nation's
6,000,000 small farms. By 1997, 157,000 large farms accounted for 72% of farm
sales, with only 2% of the U.S. population residing on farms.

Personally, I don't see this as a bad thing. Farming was backbreaking work. And it still is. But it means that money originally designed to help some of our nations hardest working people, is being diverted to large companys.

Unlike the small farms before them, the new farms have much more bargening power and resources at their disposal. If they need more money from their crops, they can get it. However because of the subsidys, they have no real reason to bargain. If prices get too low, the goverment picks up the slack. As a result, they can drop prices more then would be able to naturally. Prices on things like Corn.

Corn is the top crop for subsidy payments, due in part to the fact that corn has uses aside from food and feed. US corn ethanol subsidies are between $5.5 Billion and $7.3 Billion per year, and US ethanol producers are protected from imports of cheaper Brazilian ethanol by a 54-cent-per-gallon tariff. Producers also benefit from a federal subsidy of 51 cents per gallon, additional state subsidies and, federal crop subsidies that can bring the total to 85 cents per gallon or more.[11] The 2005 energy law mandates that billions of gallons of ethanol be blended into vehicle fuel each year, guaranteeing demand.

If you've ever wondered why Corn Syrup is in EVERYTHING cheep. This is why. Our goverment, is intentially keeping the price of corn super low.

Coupled with the fact that our goverment is handing out checks to people to NOT farm their land, the price of alternative, non-corn crops is being artifically pushed higher. While non-corn subsidys do help lowever these prices, the overall affect is that Corn, and products reliant on corn, are signifigantly cheeper then they should be. A fact reflected when you go to the stores and find an entire isle of of cheep, sugary snack foods chock full of corn syrup.

And the effect goes further. Cattle are no longer "grazed" on grass. They are corn fed. Chickens too. (Remember those "we're 100% corn fed" commercials from foster farms). As a result, Beef and Chicken are now as cheep, or cheeper then fish for the first time in history. Cheeses too. Cheese is down right CHEEP now.

Which brings us to another big benifactor of this mess. Fast Food. Cornsyrup, Beef and Cheese are the back bones of the fast food industry. Imagine if suddenly, they were more expensive then most other foods. Do you think the fast food industry woulda exploded the way it did?

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They've created a situation where Corn Syrup, but Beef and Cheese pricing is disproportionatly low compared to other, healthier choices.

Then they wonder why our people are so fat, and our healthcare is so expensive.

I say throw out the subsitys. Let ethonal push the price of corn syrup up. And let non-corn foods go back down to their natural pricing. Cheep food won't be cheep anymore, but the price of fruits, vegatables and non-corn grains will come down.

We're used to having cheep, unhealthy food. But we're not going to starve when it's gone.

We just won't force our lower class to live on McDonalds and Hostess anymore.

Miley Cyrus Being Sued.

This has to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard.

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/luxe-life/2009/2/13/miley-cyrus-sued-for-4-billion-over-slanted-eye-photo.html

Apparently a Ms Lucie J. Kim is so offended a by a Picture of Miley and her friends making faces where they pulled their eyes slanted that she is suing for 4 Billion Dollars, or 4,000 per potential claimant.

Kim claims that Miley Cyrus "should have known that her image would be
publicly disseminated via the media, which Cyrus knew focused on her
private life."

I'm sorry, don't we have a whole industry of people who make fun of minority's for a living? They're called comedians. No one's suing them.

The ability to laugh at each other and laugh at ourselves is a cornerstone of a peaceful society. If you can't listen to a comedian and laugh when he makes fun of you, there is something wrong, cause you know you were laughing when he was making fun of other people.

There are lines that shouldn't be crossed, words that shouldn't be said, that are too.. emotionally loaded still, but I hardly think slanting one's eyes is anywhere near that line, especially since there is an Asian in the same photo widening his eyes to look round.

But hey, I'm not Asian, If I'm wrong, and this is like having a shoe thrown at you, someone enlighten me.

But even if it is the worst thing ever done, why should anyone be held responsible for the actions of Tabloids? Your First Amendment right to be a idiot shouldn't be suspended because you happen to be being stalked by reporters wherever you go.

Really we should be doing something about the stalking of underage performers by tabloids and the like. The rate at which child performers reach 18 with a semblance or normality is scarily low. Frankly putting your child on TV nowadays borders on Child Abuse.

Bush Pardons himself

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ckz6pMjKFw

Obama and Prop 8

I am not a liberal. For the most part, I'm pretty sure both sides are full of shit. But I take particular loathing toward those who pray on the fears of a people to push their pile of crap.

So, I was pleasently suprised as Obama proved that the "Politics of Hope" still work and we don't have to submit to the politics of fear for the next 8 years. And he didn't do it by a small margin, but a huge one of 349 to 139. That's a crazy lead and proves americans have learned to not be swayed by the fear tactics that were used this election by the McCain camp. (The Democrats weren't completely innocent either, but Obama kept better control of his camp, keeping his side realitively clean, McCain however had little control of his people and chose the scariest running mate I've ever seen.)

But on the same night Californians decided that it was important to put a ban on Gay Marrage in the State Constitution....

Ok, let it be said, I'm Christian, so by definition, I don't belive in homosexuality. Socially speaking, I'm pretty damn conservative.

But frankly, we're in a war, with religious terrorists who are hell bent on killing us because we don't belive/behave like they think we should. Does anyone see a paralel?

a) What right does any person, have to tell another man what to belive or how to live his life? We condem the Talaban for enforing religious law, this is no different. Separation of Church and State and Equality under the law is a founding principle of this country. One that protects us all, christians included, from persecution.

b) Why are we wasting time and resources on this? People are DIEING in the world, of hunger, disease, bombs, bad water. There are genocides going on in the world, and they spent 80 million dollors on THIS? Seriously?

c) The whole Prop 8 campain was this horrible horrible fear program. And it saddens me that it worked. "They're going to teach your kids this!" I'm sorry... I wasn't taught about Gay or Straight Marrage in school, when did this start? There are provisions in the law to allow for religious objection to school curriculim. You can sit Kids out of Sex ed, if there's a new "marrage class", then you'll be able to sit them out of that too.

/endrant

Carefull what you belive on Myspace

I was horrified at what I heard on You tube this evening. I had to look up more information.

ORANGE COUNTy, Fla. -- A 13-year-old girl's sexual shenanigans have put a
second man behind bars. Morris Williams, 22, told the judge he thought the girl
was 18-years-old, but he found out Tuesday that ignorance is not a defense.

Morris Williams' mother wailed as he went off to jail. The judge asked
for media not to show 13-year-old Alisha Dean's face in court, but her pictures
are all over her MySpace page and they portray a sexy, 19-year-old divorced
woman.

"She told me she had just turned 18," Williams said.

Williams said Dean picked him up on the street and after a few
conversations they had sex. When he heard she was not 18, he went to her father.

"He was like 'well, she's 13,'" Williams said of a conversation with
Dean's father.

Williams said he never did it again, but Dean has done it
before with 24-year-old Darwin Mills. Mills was sentenced to five years in
prison.

Dean's father wanted Williams to join Mills there.

"One
of the reasons for the law is the fact that minors have poor judgment," said
Jerry Dean, the girl's father.

Williams' father believes the jail
sentence sends the wrong message to Alisha.

"I guess we just sit back
and count how many after this," Henry Smith asked after his step-son was
sentenced to jail.

Dean's family admits Alisha still stays out late and
has yet to delete her misleading MySpace page.

Williams will serve six
years probation with the first year in jail. The other five years he will have
to wear an ankle monitor. His attorney says he will come back to court to ask
again for a shorter sentence.

Biggest load of bullshit I've ever seen. two men have had their lives ruined cause of this little girls lies. Her parents fail on a epic scale. She needs to be tryed for fraud and put in Juvi.