Tuesday, April 29, 2003

School...... UP IN THE MORNING & OFF TO SCHOOL…   I’ve been thinking a lot about school these past few months.  With retirement as a teacher in two years both longed for & dreaded at the same time, I find myself the more acutely conscious of the nature & character of my job.  And I’m conscious too of the changing nature of my perception of & relationship with teaching after so many years.  What strikes me most forcibly is that for more than 30 years I have been party to one of the most sophisticated, systematic, highly organised, tightly structured & fundamentally meaningless pursuits ever devised by humankind.  At the heart of the entire schooling process there is nurtured a sort of lie: that the dissemination of pre-digested & packaged knowledge to kids constitutes a meaningful education for life.  In the face of everything that we now know to be true about the relationship between experience & learning, we continue to present to our children bundles of freeze-dried facts, insist that they memorise them & then require them ceremonially to regurgitate them.    Read the rest here: 11:51:35 PM    Talk to me! []

And she designed it in her own image, and horrible it was... RIAA's Rosen 'writing Iraq copyright laws'. Pigopolists trade slop for oil [The Register] 9:59:38 PM    Talk to me! []

Smells Fishy.... Coder Charged in Terror Probe. Intel contractor Mike Hawash, held by authorities for five weeks as a material witness, stands accused of conspiracy to aid al Qaeda and the Taliban. [Wired News] So he is being charged with ATTEMPTING to enter Afghanistan.  The evidence is of unknown relilabilty. My Question:  Is the DOJ charging him now because they have a good case?  Or because they want to save face concerning the public outcry around this case, and to make the point that since they were "right" in this case, they therefore must be right in EVERYTHING they do.... 7:50:08 PM    Talk to me! []

So if I want to "make a statement", can I blow up my neighbors house? Emphasis Emphasis Emphasis OP-ED COLUMNIST Matters Of Emphasis By PAUL KRUGMAN (excerpts) e were not lying," a Bush administration official told ABC News. "But it was just a matter of emphasis." The official was referring to the way the administration hyped the threat that Saddam Hussein posed to the United States. According to the ABC report, the real reason for the war was that the administration "wanted to make a statement." And why Iraq? "Officials acknowledge that Saddam had all the requirements to make him, from their standpoint, the perfect target." A British newspaper, The Independent, reports that "intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were furious that briefings they gave political leaders were distorted in the rush to war." One "high-level source" told the paper that "they ignored intelligence assessments which said Iraq was not a threat."   If his lips are moving he's lying [annoying white angry middle aged balding man (Soon, you're gonna work for free!!)] 6:50:16 PM    Talk to me! []

Anyone open for moving to New Hampshire? Licensed to War Drive in N.H.. A proposed law could legalize the unauthorized use of open wireless connections in the Granite State. Digital rights activists hail the law as 'enlightened.' By Brian McWilliams. [Wired News] If you don't know by now that you are suppose to secure a connection that you don't want open, then you don't read instuction books, you don't read the news, and you have no business running a wireless network. 6:05:06 PM    Talk to me! []

Killing a tumor without a knife.... Brain Surgery, Without Knife or Blood, Gains Favor [New York Times: Technology] Ms. Hogarth, who at 37 was told her malignant tumor was inoperable and given a prognosis of six months to live, went under the Gamma Knife, no-knife surgery that blasts its target with hundreds of high-intensity radiation beams in a single session. There was none of the cutting, bleeding, general anesthesia, ear-to-ear scar or long recovery associated with traditional craniotomy. She went home that evening. It seems to me that there is two types of situations.  The first is where you're only option to live is to undergo this treatment.  In that case, you're not going to worry much about the long term effects, because you are more worried about just living. The other case is where you can recieve treatment in some other form, and this is just another option.  In that case, the patient needs to be well informed on all treatment alternatives.  Too many people rely soly on what the doctor says.  Anyone facing brain cancer or any other condition should do their own research, so that the know what ALL the options are, not just what the doctor recomends.  You don't know why he is recomending the treatment, whether it is a Rx or a form of surgery. 5:28:19 PM    Talk to me! []

Is this simply collateral damage in the spam war? Web Sites Shut Down in Spam Fight. Hundreds of Web sites have been taken off the Internet in the escalating battle by activists to stop unwanted commercial e-mail. By Saul Hansell. [New York Times: Business] 1:35:49 PM    Talk to me! []

A little more on the Iranian Influence... Iranian News Channel Makes Inroads in Iraq. Daily reports from Tehran are flashing from the television screens of every Baghdad resident with electricity. By Sabrina Tavernise. [New York Times: Business] 1:31:29 PM    Talk to me! []

© Copyright 2003 Kurt Hines.