09:23 – Yesterday was three weeks since Barbara’s knee-replacement surgery. The physical therapist says she’s doing amazingly well. But sitting around the house reading and watching videos is getting to her, and she’s really looking forward to being able to get back to her regular routine. At least I can keep her busy labeling bottles for science kits until I run out of bottles.
The paper this morning reports that the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction has released its ratings of individual North Carolina public schools. Only 59% of Winston-Salem schools received a C or better grade. As bad as that is, the reality is worse. Under the stricter grading that will come into use next year, only 34% would have received a C or better. And even those new standards aren’t rigorous enough. Our public schools, like nearly all public schools nationwide, are not just failing but failed. That’s one of the main reasons why so many millions of kids are now being home-schooled.
I was surprised that the paper pointed out the extremely high correlation between each school’s grade and the percentage of poor and minority students in that school. The higher the percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price lunches, the lower that school’s grade. No surprise there for people who see things as they are instead of how they wish they were. In other words, only progressives are surprised. And, given the intellectual dishonesty of progressives, even they probably aren’t really surprised.
On a related note, several of my readers have recommended Matt Bracken’s work. After reading two of his non-fiction articles, here and here, it was clear to me that Bracken is a smart guy who’s read a lot of history. So I decided to give his fiction a try. Yesterday, I bought the Kindle version of the first book in his Enemies Trilogy, Enemies Foreign and Domestic. I got through the first couple hundred pages last night. The guy thinks clearly and writes reasonably well. Recommended.
“And, given the intellectual dishonesty of progressives, even they probably aren’t really surprised.”
There it is.
And given that, why is it they continue to push all these programs, projects, novelties and innovations? For the past half-century? Malice aforethought. It certainly hasn’t been to “fix” or improve anything, though that is what they’ve always claimed. We’ve spent trillions in this country for this stuff and all it’s gotten us is resentment, anger, bitterness and spit. Not to mention burning buildings and visceral dislike between us all.
Oh, that reminds me; I saw an article the other day that claimed North Carolina had more active KKK members than all the other southern states combined during the 1960s. Does that sound right to you, Dr. Bob?
We’re now back up above zero here this morning, 2 degrees, a slight breeze, just enough to keep the chill factuh below zero.
I don’t know about that, since I didn’t move to North Carolina until late 1979. There’s certainly still a Klan presence here, but as far as I know it’s very small. I do remember the Greensboro Massacre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro_massacre), which occurred right when I moved down here. I remember thinking that having a shootout between the communists on one hand and the Klan and Nazis on the other was a win-win situation. I thought everyone should be passing out guns and ammunition to both sides.
I remember that caper, too; and I thought the exact same thing; let the cops stand by and do the paperwork afterward. Maybe hand out ammo, whatever.
Now, of course, I’d wanna put the state gummint officials right in there between them.
Just had a decent Skype interview with the guy I’d be replacing at this gig; regular IT guy, we got along good. He’s been there three months to help out or sumthin and they have a kid there who does all the Winblows chit, while the place moves outta Winblows and into Linux, mainly Ubuntu. They also appear to be looking at replacing the M$ desktops, except, of course, for the perennial holdouts in marketing and sales and management, per SOP. He sez the pace is OK and manageable and the woman running the IT there is good with priorities and recognizing what’s gotta be done and what can wait or can’t be done. His main thing has been fiddling with the Ubuntu servers and moving stuff around and keeping as much as possible in-house while getting mission-critical chit out to the “cloud.” I wonder if that’s backwards.
Anyway, we’ll see if this goes any farther. If not, no problemo. If it does, I’ll have to swan on down there and get a close-up look at it and talk to peeps F2F before I commit one way or the other. They’ll have to talk me into it.
Mrs. OFD off again to retrieve Princess for another weekend and I’ll drive her back Sunday night, I guess. All for classical and Celtic music.
“Once again, Comcast insults a customer on a bill”
http://blog.chron.com/techblog/2015/02/once-again-comcast-insults-a-customer-on-a-bill/
Wow, that is bold for the customer service rep. Now unemployed customer service rep.
The paper this morning reports that the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction has released its ratings of individual North Carolina public schools. Only 59% of Winston-Salem schools received a C or better grade.
All public schools receiving a grade less than C should be privatized. Immediately. I have no idea what to do with children causing problems.
“All public schools receiving a grade less than C should be privatized. Immediately. I have no idea what to do with children causing problems.”
Agreed on the privatization. And teachers retested on their material and most admins canned and put on labor battalions.
Problem chilluns? Three strikes and out; if teachers AND parents can’t or won’t control them, buh-bye. Have a nice life. Bringing water and toilet paper and MRE’s to those labor battalion personnel.
My wife works extensively in the Hispanic community with parents. Currently in Coachella, CA for a 10-day gig. While Geraldo “Jerry Rivers” Rivera is screeching Latino kids assimilate right away, my wife will attest differently. There is a huge problemo in schools with a large Hispanic student population. The parents aren’t teaching English at home. By the time these kids hit High School, they are lost and doomed to welfare and menial jobs. Add the millions of Obamagrants coming in and we’re *all* doomed. CA is notorious (as is TX) for social promotion through grade school for Hispanics or any non-English speaking students.
BTW, did you see the picture of the FCC Chair holding the new 332-page regulation for “net neutrality.” I can’t wait to hear what is in it. Probably 200 pages of how to tax the shit out of the ‘net.
Dr. Bob, your book recommendation above on Amazon lists (for me) at $4.99 I thought you wouldn’t pay that much for an ebook.
Ordinarily, $2.99 is my top, but I downloaded a torrent that included all three of the books in the series, supposedly. In fact, it had two copies of #2 and one of #3 but none of #1. So I decided what the hell and sent the guy $5 for the first one.
“…they are lost and doomed to welfare and menial jobs.”
…and surviving in gangs, in direct and extremely violent competition with existing black gangs, while the Aryan Brotherhood and similar groups look on and keep their distance.
I have some years of soldier and cop experience and familiarity with weapons and small-unit tactics and I’d only be-bop around in many Murkan cities now with an armored unit and close-support air cover. If I was dropped out of a plane, chopper or off the back end of a truck full of Vermont apples, in one of those places, armed only with my handguns, an AR and a knife, I’d expect my hours were numbered and I was basically on a suicide mission.
BTW, did you see the picture of the FCC Chair holding the new 332-page regulation for “net neutrality.” I can’t wait to hear what is in it.
I loved this sentence, “Using this authority, I am submitting to my colleagues the strongest open internet protections ever proposed by the FCC. These enforceable, bright-line rules will ban paid prioritization, and the blocking and throttling of lawful content and services. “. From:
http://www.wired.com/2015/02/fcc-chairman-wheeler-net-neutrality/
I wonder what the word lawful means?
It means that ISPs are permitted to block child porn, “pirated” copyright material, and so on.
…which will, of course, throttle the bit-torrent crowds.
But I see the Pirate Bay is back up, bigger than ever. And Kickass. And others.
…for how long?
That is what the word “lawful” means to you and me. Who knows what it will mean to some bureaucrat in ten years when we have a President who publicly acknowledges that he is a Muslim and is actively implementing Sharia law in the USA.
And Kickass
My favorite.
I like Kickass, too, but son told me a while back it was “gay.” And that I should use Pirate Bay. Which, of course, got shut down temporarily. I won’t use any of these, of course, because it’s just not right. I pay full price for all media all the time and glad to do it!
I pay full price for all media all the time and glad to do it!
Amen, brother. So do I. snicker
I do, too, no snickering involved.
– The family gets disks from Netflix. Mostly these are for the kids, some for my wife, and several seasons of Connections and the like for me.
– The family watches a fair amount on Amazon Prime. Entertainment for my wife, educational for me (with a few action movies per year), and a mix for my daughter.
– The boys watch a lot of movies and TV episodes online, allegedly legally at ad-supported sites though I’ve never looked into it.
– I do torrent down a fair number of videos, but I think none are available for sale in the US or else are in the public domain. (Or should be in the public domain, though the ever-expanding time frame makes their actual status problematic.) These are mostly brand-new animes, subtitled by volunteer fans and made available within days, or even hours, of being shown on TV. It’s probably breaking Japanese law, but not American.
– The little music I listen to is either ripped from CDs I bought ages ago, streamed, or provided free.
– The other listening I do is podcasts, all free. (Though I have hit tip jars when I could afford it.)
– As for reading, I download an awful lot of free books. This can be rephrased as “a lot of awful books”, as many of them are “free today only” self-published books for Kindle. Baen and other publishers have some free stuff, too, and there are quite a few websites with stuff for free, most dreck, some excellent.* As for non-fiction, there is so much good, educational material available for free that I’ll never need to pay for nonfiction to read again.**
Except for the probable occasional screw-up, I don’t think we’re violating the law, despite US copyright law being ridiculous. This does not sit well with me.
* I’m currently reading Worm. It’s written by an amateur, but that’s only because he wrote the whole thing online as a serial novel without a contract in hand. Quality is good to excellent and it runs, get this, 1.75M words. It’s taken me two months to get 63% in because my free time is limited, but I’m very impressed. (I know the percentage because I wrote a small program to pull down the web pages and make a Kindle book for my own use; one advantage of a tinker mentality combined with programming skills.)
** This doesn’t mean I’m not going to pay for nonfiction. I’ve bought a couple copies of each of RBT’s “Learn Science at Home” books, for instance, one to keep and one to give away, and plan to buy several print copies of the prepping book, again, mostly to give away.
Well, I’m not a complete bad-ass outlaw; we also stream Netflix and Amazon Prime here occasionally and I also buy music CD’s and movie DVD’s once in a while. I also still buy, and have always bought, LOTS of books, fiction and nonfiction. And my Kindle is loaded with stuff.
Other than that, there may be some snickering going on here from time to time.