"News that's not known, or not known enough."
Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion.
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"News that's not known, or not known enough." Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion. |
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Connecting the dots: The mind-numbing stupidity of GM and the American auto industry by Mr. Chuckles Saturday, July 5, 2008 PERMANENT LINK All of a sudden GM can produce 40 MPG cars, something they claimed would be impossible to do before 2016 without massive cost increases and technological advances. Has there ever been a more self-destructive company with such fat headed management that survived for so long? ... Click for more ... Mr. Chuckles  My first experience in voter registration wasn't a good one by MonkeyMan Saturday, July 5, 2008 PERMANENT LINK A friend and I signed up to work First Friday. Each first Friday of the month downtown Augusta has like a block party in what is called "The Commons." There are vendors and shows, some ok music and lots of people. She and I were working the crowds so to speak while the others were at stationary tables along Broad St. My friend and I walked all up and down the street then wondered into the commons. While we were registering people some goons who had shirts with logos of the local TV station and the word STAFF on the back came by on a golf cart and told us that we were not allowed to solicit. WTF? We finished with the people we were working with and returned to HQ. Our ring leader said that he knew that we were being restricted out of the common area, but didn't feel like fighting it today. I came home and looked up Voter Registration Law. Part of the language of a recent amendment includes the criminality of intimidation of anyone registering or assisting registering voters. Do any of you have any experience with this? What do I do? Who do I call? When did assisting people with their constitutional rights become solicitation? That is the most moronic thing I think I have ever lived through. Which brings us to education. There was in our history a shift in focus. We went from attending universities to become intellectually mature, to attending them to get a job. Everything, not surprisingly, has become a product in our now consumer economy. A diploma is now sold to someone who wants to earn more, not know more. I am one who earns more after getting a degree than before. I went to college later in life with romantic ideas about what college was, and found out that they are selling a product to people who do as little as possible to graduate. I was fortunate to find some "old school" professors (who have now retired). At the time I attended I could invest my own time with them to expand, grow, learn, and hopefully mature. Now that I am in my field I see that science has to have a profit, a product, something marketable. We lack alternative fuel and green products because they still have a limited market. If the masses were clamoring for green technologies they way the are in looking for a magic pill to ease all of their pains, the funding would be there, the scientists would be there, the technology would be there. Science, like everything else, is for sale. So. What is the solution? How do we educate people who don't like to read? How do we reach the ignorant generations sitting slack-jawed in front of the TV, addicted to oil, tacos, iPods, and self image? It may not be a bomb, but I think you are right in thinking there will have to be an explosion or devastation of some sort to clear the landscape of distraction. Thoreau wrote: MonkeyMan OK, let me get this straight: You're registering voters at a public event on the Fourth of July — ain't much that's more American than that. You said you were in "the common area", which I'm guessing means a public street, sidewalk, or park. And someone in a "STAFF" t-shirt tells you there's "no solicitation"? That certainly does seem dead wrong to me. Helen & Harry
America's future up in flames by Siskiyousis Saturday, July 5, 2008 PERMANENT LINK The big picture: California fires When oh when are we going to realize that no one should be building structures in the deserts and the evergreen forests — places where water and habitat have been problematic from ages past? ... and having more and more babies from whom the people currently alive have stolen their futures? Too many people already and if we don't get with the program now, there will no longer be a future for hoo-mans by the end of 2012... One might surely think that the weather in the past few decades has been some kind of indicator. End of rant. These images make me furious. That insurance is sold to people building in flood plains and river edges, wilderness and remote mountains, that young people are sent in there to fight the always inevitable burn-overs (I guess we should be glad they were here instead of in Iraq) to protect private property and not their own and other people's lives. Siskiyousis Foul-mouthed future by Chris D. Saturday, July 5, 2008 PERMANENT LINK US teacher is suspended for letting pupils read bestseller
How is it 'neglect of duty' for a teacher to actually teach some high school students? And this non-banned book that this teacher wasn't actually forbidden to teach by the union. It was that particular school's board, or more accurately one member of that school's board and some pushovers that issued a non-committal caution against using it as subject matter after the fact because it contained some foul language. From personal experience I can tell you that there is more wrong with the educational system of North America than a sane human being should attempt to imagine and this is just another textbook example of the inability of a single person to accept real life as a part of the student curriculum threatening a teacher's entire career and more importantly derailing the education of the country's already foul-mouthed future. (Link now removed. Out of sight, out of mind, out of the history books. Never did anything wrong.)
Let's see, May 14th 07 to June 1st 07... That's just under three weeks suspension for making a bunch of 6th graders pray and beg for their lives. Man, it's a good thing that guy they got to pretend to be a murderous, armed psychopath didn't mutter any curses as he tried to force open the locked doors into the dark room filled with terrified children convinced he wanted to kill them. Compare that to 18 months for getting a group of underachieving teens to read a book and you wonder just what it is we pay these people for. Chris D. A microcosm of Amerika by The Alchemist Saturday, July 5, 2008 PERMANENT LINK Well, it's happy 4th of July and of course I am savoring the sweet air of freedom, in an approved and orderly way. The morning is balmy and soft, with birds scampering and squirrels chirping and a whole field of possibilities just beginning to tinge with new buds. The dog is by my side, the bike is in the garage, and the pig is in the tunnel, so to speak. In the midst of the gathering gloom, still Summer shines sweet in Hobbiton, for the nonce. But even here the splendor is spoiled by the sludge drifts of the recent flood, the miasmic fear of thousands of dispossessed souls starting to stir and wonder how to rebuild their gutted lives. A microcosm of Amerika, that blighted whore sucking an oily butt at dawn trying to recall a glimpse of her fair past in a greasy barroom mirror, counting out her change for one more potion to hold the horror of her decrepitude at bay, if only for awhile. She feels the sickness eating at her, but doctors are so expensive, and lately she'd been reduced to spending the bulk of her allotment on ammo and the nastier kinds of street soporifics. The weight of the pistol in her threadbare purse still gives a small thrill of reassurance, but it is tinny and hollow, and she suppresses a small gurgle of bile with an unhinged grim grin, she wasn't going down alone, no she'd be sure to take a few more of the bastards with her. Moishe was right, they were ALL out to get her... The Alchemist Embarrassed by Wig Saturday, July 5, 2008 PERMANENT LINK Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis
Embarrass Bush????? Geez, Bush embarrasses himself and doesn't seem to mind. Wig |
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