Don't listen to the crowd, they say "jump."
The central tension in the software process comes from the fact that we must go from an informally identified need that exists in-the-world to a formal model that operates in-the-computer.
From "Beyond Programming" by Bruce Blum, as quoted in "The Design of Design" by Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
It is time to question the meaning of the words âeducation reformâ and the investment in reforming the current system. Once the automobile was invented, there was no need for âbuggy whip reformâ or âhorse turnaround plans.â Mr. Khan, and those like him, have exposed the current system for the obsolete monopoly that it is. This article lays waste to the idea of âreformingâ the current system. The best thing we can do is rapidly manage the transition to an entirely new education model.
This afternoon James Jay Lee, a crazy person with a gun, a bomb, and an anti-human manifesto inspired by Al Goreâs An Inconvenient Truth, took hostages at the offices of the Discovery Channel in Silver Spring. He was shot and killed by police. The hostages were freed, unharmed.
How many Tea Party types have done this? Oh right, *zero*. Via Gun-wielding ecoterrorist calls for reduction in human population, gets wish | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment.
... [I]f you look at a Marxist Utopia -- say, Cuba -- what youâll see is basically a plantation. At the top, youâve got the Massa and his family -- Fidel, Raul, et al. -- followed by various layers of overseers -- the Communist Party apparat, the secret police -- and House Negroes -- e.g., the state-controlled media -- all living off the surplus labor of the Field Negroes, whose produce is disposed of not according to their own desires (that would be capitalism!) but according to their bettersâ. This, weâre told is for the best, since they arenât smart enough to make their own decisions anyway, and the Massa looks after them with food, housing, and health care. Slaveholders even defended their system as more humane and less exploitative than atomistic capitalism, conveniently ignoring the role of the lash, just as apologists for Marxism conveniently ignore the role of the gulag.
Oh how I *hate* the damned Communists. Via Instapundit » Blog Archive » DAVE KOPEL: Obama Is Too A Christian..
In one camp are conservative Christians and their champion, the Texas State Board of Education; in the other are politically radical multiculturalists and their de facto champion, President Barack Obama. The two competing visions couldnât be more different. And the stakes couldnât be higher. Unfortunately, whichever side wins -- your kid ends up losing.
Thatâs because this war is for the power to dictate what our children are taught -- and, by extension, how future generations of Americans will view the world. Long gone are the days when classrooms were for learning: now each side sees the public school system as a vast indoctrination camp in which future culture-warriors are trained. The problem is, two diametrically opposed philosophies are struggling for supremacy, and neither is willing to give an inch, so the end result is extremism, no matter which side temporarily comes out on top.
Both visions are grotesque and unacceptable -- and yet they are currently the only two choices on the national menu.
via Zombie » Ideological War Spells Doom for Americaâs Schoolkids.
While for the most part the Texas State Board of Education is in fact admirably defending patriotism, they unfortunately drag some ideological baggage into the meeting room as well, and do here and there attempt to push conservative and/or Christian viewpoints into the curriculum. Maybe not as much as their critics charge, and theyâre not always successful, but they try. And try. And try.
And it is this attempt on the part of the TSBE to overreach which frustrates me to no end. Because every time they push back too hard, they look just as partisan as the leftists theyâre trying to counteract. Which gives the media and the liberal critics a valid basis on which to criticize Texasâ attempt (and thus any attempt) to salvage a patriotic curriculum.
Furthermore, the conservative board members of the TSBE have in a few cases gone too far and ended up distorting historical fact to match their own wishful thinking for a Christian nation. When you want to rectify your opponentâs twisting of the facts, itâs never good to overtwist them yourself in the opposite direction. It might work when negotiating the price of a used car, but in an argument about the nature of truth it only serves to undermine your position.
There are a lot of folks who think that a border fence is part of the "solution" for illegal immigration in the US. The problem with fences is that they work both ways. A fence now might seem like a good idea to keep people out; call me paranoid, but at some point in the future, I fear the same fence might also be used to keep people in.
The very phrase âinsecure bordersâ conjures an image of government failing at its most fundamental responsibility--namely, protecting citizens from invading marauders. People see in their mindsâ eyes an America increasingly at risk of being conquered by foreigners, leaving Americans at the mercy of invading rapists, plunderers, and murderers.
Immigrants, however, arenât invaders, much less warriors in a conquering army.
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For perspective, ask if Americaâs borders were insecure until 1921 when, with the Emergency Quota Act, Uncle Sam first began seriously to restrict the number of immigrants allowed into the United States. Were Americans, until just 90 years ago, living in peril of their lives and livelihoods because U.S. borders were "insecure"?
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In fact, the security of American borders--if by this phrase we mean genuinely decreased risks to Americansâ persons and property--would almost certainly rise with open borders.
Socialism: Quick, what's the murder capital of the world: Kabul? Juarez? Try Caracas, Venezuela, a city whose dictator, Hugo Chavez, has made murder a means of extending his control.
The silent protest at Monday night's Miss Universe Pageant in Las Vegas was invisible to nearly everyone -- except Venezuelans. On her final catwalk, the ranking Miss Universe, Stefania Fernandez, suddenly whipped out a Venezuelan flag in a patriotic but protocol-breaking gesture.
Fernandez waved her flag for the same reason Americans waved theirs after 9/11 -- to convey resolution amid distress. Her flag had seven stars, significant because Chavez had arbitrarily added an eighth, making any use of a difficult-to-find seven-star banner an act of defiance.
Emboldened by the crass nature of the opposition to the center [i.e., the "Ground Zero mosque"], its defenders have started to talk as if it represented no problem at all and as if the question were solely one of religious tolerance. It would be nice if this were true. But tolerance is one of the first and most awkward questions raised by any examination of Islamism. We are wrong to talk as if the only subject was that of terrorism. As Western Europe has already found to its cost, local Muslim leaders have a habit, once they feel strong enough, of making demands of the most intolerant kind. Sometimes it will be calls for censorship of anything "offensive" to Islam. Sometimes it will be demands for sexual segregation in schools and swimming pools. The script is becoming a very familiar one. And those who make such demands are of course usually quite careful to avoid any association with violence. They merely hint that, if their demands are not taken seriously, there just might be a teeny smidgeon of violence from some other unnamed quarter â¦
(All emphasis mine.) Via The "Ground Zero mosque" debate is about tolerance--and a whole lot more. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine.