Something jumped out at me while reading this article. Specifically, the reasoning given for indefinite detention, without charge, of suspected terrorists is that this is lawful until the end of a war.
So when exactly are we going to be able to say that we’ve won the War on Terror?
Please don’t misunderstand. I think terrorists are scum and they deserve to be dealt with harshly. When you wrap your mind around the fact that terrorists would gladly see innocent women and children die in order to gain something political, you’ll understand that there is no dealing with them.
But that doesn’t mean that what we’re doing is right ethically or even politically. I don’t think that using the cover of an ongoing and open ended war on a concept to hold people without charging and trying them, forever, is right. If we have evidence against these people, let’s have it presented in a court of law. If we don’t, have we a right to detain them?
We need to be better than those we oppose, otherwise what’s to distinguish us from them? They use bombs, we use prisons, but ultimately everyone involved is destroying lives, families, trust. I understand the need to hold some things in confidence and don’t expect all intelligence to be made public. Still, there should be some way to show that a process is being followed that honors our American way of life and adherence to the law. We are a nation of laws, not of men, and certainly not of fear (or fear mongering).
I don’t think anybody will disagree that teachers have a tough job. I don’t think anybody will disagree that teachers who work hard deserve respect fair compensation. Unionization is a means to achieve this but the CFT set its sites a bit higher than that - the union leaders who make the biggest promises to their members, after all, are the ones who get voted into office.
As it now stands the union has engineered a system wherein under-performing teachers are immune from any sort of action by school administrators. This includes firing. I suppose a teacher could get fired if they really tried hard, but it doesn’t happen nearly as often as it needs to.
My favorite part of this whole article is that nowhere in this scrum do any leaders attempt to defend the benefits that unions have gained for their members. These benefits are indefensible. Rather, union leaders try to distract, using emotional ad hominem attacks to divert attention. I particularly like this phrase:
he is encouraged to speak with the people who educate California’s children and hear from them what the situation is like.
What is the situation like? Too many pesky standards? Too little funding? Too many teachers retiring, eroding the unions power base? I’m curious to know just what the “situation” is like. Further, I want to know what the teachers union is doing about the “situation”. My understanding of the “situation” needs some help. Anybody care to clue me in?
Given that there are situations and all, maybe the teachers union should be working on addressing the situations rather than making up new awards to give to (liberal) executives that think more accountability and oversight might be a good thing.
I’m going to let the competition… sing? for themselves:
I’m seriously not comfortable with the idea that American popular culture is how the world sees us. Yet it’s easy to see why this is the case when most of the media that the rest of the world produces is little better than what you see above - who wouldn’t want to watch “Real World” instead of this Kazakh garbage?
So American culture now counts as its main ambassadors Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears and Angelina Jolie. This is not an optimal situation but fear not, I have a solution.
My solution doesn’t fix American popular culture, but rather brings the rest of the planet up/down to our “level”. The idea here is that we hold “Kazakhstani Idol” and “Burmese Idol” contests and secretly fund, through secret CIA accounts, the costs foreign performers incur while creating indigenous media. This way we’ll have kDzjay-Zee of Nepal doing ridiculous things with his/her life and making a fool of himself and reflecting poorly on his/her own people. Given enough wealth for nothing, foreign pop icons are bound to self destruct in spectacular fashion and the all those foreigners will be so busy watching “Peoples Revolutionary Entertainment Tonight” that they won’t have time to care that Britney and Kfed are split or whatever.
America wins when nobody pays attention to our celebrities.
I’ve sung the praises of Dreamhost because of the quantity and quality of features they provide. And the price is certainly right.
So it’s been frustrating to find that the performance and reliability of my Dreamhost service has left much to be desired. Noting some really show page render times on this blog, I ran “top” to see if I could find something. Observe:
What this shows is that on a machine with 4GB of memory, 3.80GB is taken. That’s a problem. With literally dozens of customers running any number of processes, that means that pages are swapping out like crazy, meaning some pretty awful performance. It’s no wonder that we’ve got page load speeds of 8+ seconds.
So what’s the alternative here? I could switch my service but that would be hugely inconvenient. I’ll be contacting Dreamhost to talk about the situation but I’ve not got a huge amount of hope that my plight will receive much concern, what with me being on the bottom floor plan.
Many of us have asked, or been asked, what we’d do if we knew we had six months to live (or a year or whatever). What’s your answer?
The fact is, we’re all going to die but we don’t like to think about it in a personal sort of context. We give ourselves some longish horizon within which to work, to fulfill all our expectations for ourselves, so that when we don’t succeed we can always think to ourselves, “I’ve still got time.”
The German in this video was diagnosed with terminal leukemia and had one year to live. What he chose to make of the rest of his life is contrary to what most would do. He chose to risk his life by riding on the outside of a bullet train.
In a way I respect him. Rather than clinging to a fading hope he embraced his fate and lived a life without fear. In what other context could somebody ride on the outside of a 330km/h bullet train other than when their own life is no longer something they’re seeking to protect? People talk about facing death with dignity. This is more like facing death with chutzpah, with attitude.
