---

Belief gets in the way of learning

Are teachers getting worse, children getting more obtuse? or both!

There has been a shift away from holding children accountable to syllabi. Giving a child a failing grade would harm his/her self-esteem, so it is forbidden. The situation isn't that extreme in most places, but there has been a palpable lowering of standards of effort.

OMG - (jaw hits the floor with a resounding clunk!). This is WORSE than the discipline process (which no longer exists)... I have heard of "group scaling" of marks (which impacts everyone) but this is absolutely ridiculous. This is about the only damn thing a student is accountable for - GRADES but wait, now there is nothing to be accountable or responsible for! Why even go to school, if you screw up, you wont really screw up. I mean continuous feedback (positive and negative) is the breakfast of champions!! This adjusting of grades is also padding on the "hammer of failure" of the teaching and parenting process (if the grades are still - 'okay' - note quality reduction, then parents are off the hook too).

Talk about slippery slope. I am simply astounded.

What the US public education system is seeing is large segments of the student population failing to "make the grade." It's difficult to imagine that ALL of them just happen to be dumber than their parents. It is much more likely that the system is failing its students in some systemmic way.

[/quote]

Less 'have' and more 'have nots' i fear the crevasse is going to ever widen over the next 20 years.

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Belief gets in the way of learning

Are teachers getting worse, children getting more obtuse? or both!

There has been a shift away from holding children accountable to syllabi. Giving a child a failing grade would harm his/her self-esteem, so it is forbidden. The situation isn't that extreme in most places, but there has been a palpable lowering of standards of effort.

OMG - (jaw hits the floor with a resounding clunk!). This is WORSE than the discipline process (which no longer exists)... I have heard of "group scaling" of marks (which impacts everyone) but this is absolutely ridiculous. This is about the only damn thing a student is accountable for - GRADES but wait, now there is nothing to be accountable or responsible for! Why even go to school, if you screw up, you wont really screw up. I mean continuous feedback (positive and negative) is the breakfast of champions!! This adjusting of grades is also padding on the "hammer of failure" of the teaching and parenting process (if the grades are still - 'okay' - note quality reduction, then parents are off the hook too).

Talk about slippery slope. I am simply astounded.

What the US public education system is seeing is large segments of the student population failing to "make the grade." It's difficult to imagine that ALL of them just happen to be dumber than their parents. It is much more likely that the system is failing its students in some systemmic way.

Less 'have' and more 'have nots' i fear the crevasse is going to ever widen over the next 20 years.[/quote]
You mean wealth gaps? What do you care? Wealth is crap we produce....it doesn't matter whether your neighbor has more than you...just ignore him. it's just stuff, man. molecules arranged in a certain format. Big deal..who cares if Bill Gates has more 'stuff' than you or I do?

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Founder of BOINC team Objectivists. Oh the humanity! Rational people crunching data!
I did NOT authorize this belly writing!

Less 'have' and more 'have nots' i fear the crevasse is going to ever widen over the next 20 years.

You mean wealth gaps? What do you care? Wealth is crap we produce....it doesn't matter whether your neighbor has more than you...just ignore him. it's just stuff, man. molecules arranged in a certain format. Big deal..who cares if Bill Gates has more 'stuff' than you or I do?

That could also refer to "knowledge" or the ability to form independent "rational" thought. YCMV

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I realized the dead-end roads I ended up taking weren't always my fault. Many thanks to all that have helped in this - and you know who you are.
TheBeatenPath

Less 'have' and more 'have nots' i fear the crevasse is going to ever widen over the next 20 years.

You mean wealth gaps? What do you care? Wealth is crap we produce....it doesn't matter whether your neighbor has more than you...just ignore him. it's just stuff, man. molecules arranged in a certain format. Big deal..who cares if Bill Gates has more 'stuff' than you or I do?

Too bad most people don't think like this, but havingness goes well beyond material wealth.

What happens when you don't have an education, you can't read, write or think? What happens to choice?

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Belief gets in the way of learning

Less 'have' and more 'have nots' i fear the crevasse is going to ever widen over the next 20 years.

You mean wealth gaps? What do you care? Wealth is crap we produce....it doesn't matter whether your neighbor has more than you...just ignore him. it's just stuff, man. molecules arranged in a certain format. Big deal..who cares if Bill Gates has more 'stuff' than you or I do?

Too bad most people don't think like this, but havingness goes well beyond material wealth.

What happens when you don't have an education, you can't read, write or think? What happens to choice?

Imagine (in John Lennon's words here---what do you care? Most of humanity has lived without being able to read and write.....or attained property...)

It's just a mystic view that makes most believe it is taken by some and afforded to a few. Ignore what your neighbor has and stop feeling the envy. What's so hard about this anti-marxist view? Does it upset some mystics' epistemology? Probably. Jettison that epistemology as it's indifferent to you, be logical...avoid that self hating behavior and move on.

---

Founder of BOINC team Objectivists. Oh the humanity! Rational people crunching data!
I did NOT authorize this belly writing!

While Mexico uses its own army to secure its borders (especially its southern border with Guatemala), it feels that America doesn't have the same sovereign right.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/20060516-1635-mexico-us-immigration.html

Mexico warns of lawsuits against U.S. if National Guard detains migrants

By Will Weissert
ASSOCIATED PRESS

4:35 p.m. May 16, 2006

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico – Mexico warned Tuesday it would file lawsuits in U.S. courts if National Guard troops detain migrants on the border, and some officials said they fear the crackdown will force illegal crossers into more perilous areas to avoid detection.

President Bush announced Monday that he will send 6,000 National Guard troops to the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, but said the troops will provide intelligence and surveillance support to U.S. Border Patrol agents and will not catch and detain illegal immigrants.

“If there is a real wave of rights abuses, if we see the National Guard starting to directly participate in detaining people ... we would immediately start filing lawsuits through our consulates,” Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez said in an interview with a Mexico City radio station.

Mexican officials worry the increased security at the U.S. border will lead to more deaths. Since the bolstered surveillance at crossing spots in Texas and California in 1994, migrants have flooded Arizona's hard-to-patrol desert and deaths have spiked.

Migrant groups estimate 500 people died trying to cross the border in 2005. The Border Patrol reported 473 deaths as of Sept. 30.

Sending the National Guard “will not stop the flow of migrants, to the contrary, it will probably go up,” as people try to get into the U.S. with hopes of applying for a possible amnesty program, said Julieta Nunez Gonzalez, the Ciudad Juarez representative of Mexico's National Immigration Institute.

Nunez said she planned to ask the Mexican government to send a migrant protection force, Grupo Beta, to more remote sections of the border.

The dusty outpost near the New Mexico border has turned into a smugglers haven after the U.S. Border Patrol increased its presence on the Arizona border.

Along the border in Nuevo Laredo, Carlos Gonzalez, a 23-year old from Mexico's southern state of Chiapas, was waiting for a chance to swim across the river into Texas. He said soldiers would not stop him getting to a construction job he had lined up in North Carolina.

“Desperation gives one a lot of willpower. If they stop me 20 times, I'll arrive on the 21st,” Gonzalez said resting on a street corner outside a migrant shelter.

However, Carlos Ferrera, a 27-year-old from Honduras who lost part of his arm in a recent car accident, was worried that the National Guard could push him into dangerous terrain when he crosses to get to an $8.50 an hour landscaping job in Dallas.

“The more reinforced the border is the further we will have to go to find places to get in.” Ferrera said.

Mexican newspapers Tuesday characterized the decision as a hardening of the U.S. position, and some criticized President Vicente Fox for not taking a stronger stand, though Fox called Bush on Sunday to express his concerns.

Fox's spokesman, Ruben Aguilar, said Tuesday that Mexico accepted Bush's statement that the Guard troops didn't imply a militarization of area, and that Mexico remained “optimistic” that the U.S. Senate would approve an immigration policy “in the interests of both countries.”

He noted Bush expressed support for the legalization of some immigrants and the implementation of a guest worker program.

“This is definitely not a militarization,” said Aguilar.

Salvadoran President Tony Saca said he worried that there could be an increase in abuses against migrants because National Guard troops are trained to handle natural disasters and wars.

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There are three basic types, Mr. Pizer, the wills, the won'ts, and the can'ts. The wills accomplish everything, the won'ts oppose everything, and the can'ts won't try anything.

While Mexico uses its own army to secure its borders (especially its southern border with Guatemala), it feels that America doesn't have the same sovereign right.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/20060516-1635-mexico-us-immigration.html

A Mexican friend of mine explained it to me like this: The less poor people that leave Mexico, the more the burden on the Mexican government. They'd have to deal with the poor people that suddenly stop leaving the country.

That's probably why they're upset about this whole thing.

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Just what will the National Guard guard?

RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR.
THE UNION-TRIBUNE

May 17, 2006

Just what President Bush needed: another controversy involving the National Guard.

I've heard plenty of bad ideas – and few good ones – about how to secure the U.S.-Mexican border and what to do with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants who have already breached it.

One of the worst ideas is to deploy the National Guard at the border. And one of the poorer ways to deal with illegal immigrants is anything resembling amnesty.

As Bush made clear Monday in his address to the nation, he wants to do both. He plans to send 6,000 National Guard troops to the border to lend a hand to the more than 11,000 Border Patrol agents already there. He also wants a “rational middle ground” that would allow perhaps millions of illegal immigrants who have established roots in the United States to apply for citizenship.

Indeed, the fact that Bush wants to do the first is a clue that he's serious about pushing for the second.

Apparently, the White House puts stock in those polls showing that most Americans would support legalizing the undocumented if we also control our borders.

The language about citizenship is new. Up to now, what we've heard from the administration was limited to allowing illegal immigrants to remain in the country in three-year increments with the unrealistic expectation that some would leave voluntarily. Now Bush wants to offer at least some of them a chance to stay permanently.

For my part, I've warmed up a little to the idea of legalizing some of the undocumented – as long as they pay a fine, learn English and otherwise take responsibility for changing their immigration status. But my view of sending in the troops hasn't changed over the 15 years that I've covered this issue. As a solution to our self-induced immigration woes, I give it a “D” – for dumb, drastic and dangerous.

It's dumb because, though this may come as a shock to the television personalities who parachuted into the San Diego area this week for live shots in front of barbed wire fences, the front line in the immigration battle isn't the U.S.-Mexico border. It's the parking lot of the mega-hardware store in Indianapolis where people pick up day laborers. It's in the restaurant in Las Vegas, and the hotel in Denver, and the construction site in Atlanta. And it is in American households where easy access to cheap labor lets middle-class families have nannies and housekeepers, and other luxuries that were once the sole province of the upper class.

It's drastic because, as a practical matter, the National Guard is already spread too thin thanks to the war in Iraq and natural disasters at home. It also makes Bush look desperate, as if he's caving in to reactionary bullies on the far right who want – as New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson put it – a “repressive” immigration policy. It was just a few years ago that Bush, during an interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, pooh-poohed the idea of putting the Guard on the border. Now Bush has flip-flopped.

Finally, it's dangerous because the roles served by soldiers and cops aren't interchangeable. Ask any law enforcement officer who served in the military. Whereas the Border Patrol can – through techniques such as vehicle stops in border communities – tactically remove illegal immigrants, the National Guard is a blunt instrument. And when that instrument is used indiscriminately, people can get hurt.

Bush assures us that won't happen, and that the Guard will “not be involved in direct law enforcement activities.” Under the administration's plan, the National Guard would have very little contact with illegal immigrants; it couldn't detain or apprehend anyone or directly guard the border. The idea is for the Guard to conduct surveillance and build roads, fences and barriers.

This is not exactly what the right-wing restrictionists had in mind. They wanted a military force to seal the border. And so they wasted no time in blasting and mocking the president's idea. They probably also weren't pleased that Bush, in his speech, noted that “the vast majority of illegal immigrants are decent people who work hard, support their families, practice their faith and lead responsible lives” or that “every human being has dignity and value no matter what their citizenship papers say.”

Given the opposition the plan is likely to generate on both sides of the debate, it's hard to see the political benefit of this exercise. But what do you expect when, in trying to please both extremes, you come up with something as comical as a National Guard with orders not to do any guarding?

---

me@rescam.org

Less 'have' and more 'have nots' i fear the crevasse is going to ever widen over the next 20 years.

You mean wealth gaps? What do you care? Wealth is crap we produce....it doesn't matter whether your neighbor has more than you...just ignore him. it's just stuff, man. molecules arranged in a certain format. Big deal..who cares if Bill Gates has more 'stuff' than you or I do?

Too bad most people don't think like this, but havingness goes well beyond material wealth.

What happens when you don't have an education, you can't read, write or think? What happens to choice?

Imagine (in John Lennon's words here---what do you care? Most of humanity has lived without being able to read and write.....or attained property...)

It's just a mystic view that makes most believe it is taken by some and afforded to a few. Ignore what your neighbor has and stop feeling the envy. What's so hard about this anti-marxist view? Does it upset some mystics' epistemology? Probably. Jettison that epistemology as it's indifferent to you, be logical...avoid that self hating behavior and move on.

And how are people (the general populous) to attain this knowledge and adopt this epistemology with any level of understanding as to what they have adopted?

---

Belief gets in the way of learning

From Wired.com

The Eternal Value of Privacy
By Bruce Schneier

02:00 AM May, 18, 2006

The most common retort against privacy advocates -- by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures -- is this line: "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"

Some clever answers: "If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me." "Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition." "Because you might do something wrong with my information." My problem with quips like these -- as right as they are -- is that they accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It's not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect.

Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? ("Who watches the watchers?") and "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Watch someone long enough, and you'll find something to arrest -- or just blackmail -- with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies -- whoever they happen to be at the time.

Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.

We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need.

A future in which privacy would face constant assault was so alien to the framers of the Constitution that it never occurred to them to call out privacy as an explicit right. Privacy was inherent to the nobility of their being and their cause. Of course being watched in your own home was unreasonable. Watching at all was an act so unseemly as to be inconceivable among gentlemen in their day. You watched convicted criminals, not free citizens. You ruled your own home. It's intrinsic to the concept of liberty.

For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that -- either now or in the uncertain future -- patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable.

How many of us have paused during conversation in the past four-and-a-half years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on? Probably it was a phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail or instant-message exchange or a conversation in a public place. Maybe the topic was terrorism, or politics, or Islam. We stop suddenly, momentarily afraid that our words might be taken out of context, then we laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanor has changed, and our words are subtly altered.

This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us. This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And it's our future as we allow an ever-intrusive eye into our personal, private lives.

Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.

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There are three basic types, Mr. Pizer, the wills, the won'ts, and the can'ts. The wills accomplish everything, the won'ts oppose everything, and the can'ts won't try anything.

From Wired.com

The Eternal Value of Privacy
By Bruce Schneier

02:00 AM May, 18, 2006

Surely pulling something off as grand as this would require a major event to get the ball rolling... Hmm... 911? ;)

From Wired.com

The Eternal Value of Privacy
By Bruce Schneier

02:00 AM May, 18, 2006

The most common retort against privacy advocates -- by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures -- is this line: "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"

[snip]

Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny(?), is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.

What eloquent rubbish. At the heart of the recent privacy debates is the Fourth Amendment, which exists as a guard against unreasonable search and seizure in the context of criminal investigations. The privacy this article discusses is protected by other laws--laws against trespass and other property rights. The reason I can’t watch you take a shower has nothing to do with your Fourth Amendment rights, but has everything to do with your being in your private residence and taking care not to expose yourself to public view. If you shower at the beach in an open stall with no walls around you, that once private act no longer is.

Which leads me to the biggest problem that this and other liberal commentators have in trying to explain the so-called dangers of intelligence gathering by our spy agencies, that is, that they consistently shift the analysis from the subject at hand to some gut-level appeal to emotions having nothing to do with the relevant legal issues. Both media commentators and politicians should be better versed in the law that many of them so quickly, but incorrectly, cite as being violated by the government.

First, the government is prohibited from entering certain places without a warrant (or some well defined exception to the warrant requirement); but those things that are done in public do not require a warrant. If someone is planning or committing a crime in the privacy of their home, the police still have to get a warrant, but if that planning or that crime takes place in a public park, and a police officer happens by, no warrant is necessary. Surveillance/security cameras in public places do not violate privacy rights because people have no right to privacy to what they expose to the public view.

Second, liberal pundits fail to draw a distinction between private conversations and records of activity that do not reveal the substance of a conversation. If the government wants to listen to a phone conversation, that may require a wiretap order, but records of who called whom (the same information your caller ID reveals) is not a conversation so it does not have the same protections. If the police want to follow someone who is going from their home to another location, no warrant is required, even though entering that same private home to collect evidence may indeed require a warrant.

Third, there is a difference, again ignored by these commentators, between what police can do when investigating crimes and what the military can do when prosecuting a war. Captured combatants do not have to be read Miranda warnings. The Fourth Amendment deals with domestic, criminal investigations, while Article II of the Constitution gives the President, as Commander-in-Chief of the military, power to conduct a war. The Congress okayed giving the President these powers after 9/11, to deal with the Al Qaeda threat, and again before hostilities were resumed in Iraq. If a known terrorist calls someone in the U.S. or someone here calls that terrorist, the military may need to know whether an attack is being planned to save the lives of our citizens. Remember, this war is being conducted by terrorist organizations who have, and who wish to continue their attacks on civilian targets here in the United States. To the extent that they have operatives in this country, a constitutional limit that is meant to keep criminal investigators from going to far, should not apply to those who are running this war.

Your rights under the Fourth Amendment are intact. If you are committing murders, rapes or thefts in the privacy your house, the police still need a warrant to search. But you never had protection for: things you expose to the view of others; or records of activity that do not contain substantive information; or conversations that deal with the destruction of the nation in time of war.

[quote]From Wired.com

The Eternal Value of Privacy
By Bruce Schneier

02:00 AM May, 18, 2006

The most common retort against privacy advocates -- by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures -- is this line: "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"

[snip]

What eloquent rubbish. At the heart of the recent privacy debates is the Fourth Amendment, which exists as a guard against unreasonable search and seizure in the context of criminal investigations. The privacy this article discusses is protected by other laws--laws against trespass and other property rights. The reason I can’t watch you take a shower has nothing to do with your Fourth Amendment rights, but has everything to do with your being in your private residence and taking care not to expose yourself to public view. If you shower at the beach in an open stall with no walls around you, that once private act no longer is.
--<snip>--

Your argument is sound in the 20th century, but how about the 21st century? Consider the following scenarios

1. I am composing an e-mail in the privacy of my home, I am discussing some rather controversial political topics, like ID, Abortion, Racism with a good friend of mind and am very frank about my views. However i am using GOOGLE mail, so everthing that i send is stored within Googles DB, (NEVER DELETED) i then go to the GOOGLE search engine and perform a few searches... i wanted to get some pronography for my wife and i to look at, since she has certain tastes that are not 'easy to come by' (these are also stored in the GOOGLE history and traced back to me by the COOKIE / EMAIL account cross reference).

Do you think this information could be used "in the wrong way"? Perhaps no, well then consider this.

Google Must Hand Government Information About Searches - March 15 ... The U.S. government is already exercising its 'HEAVY HAND' (MS, YAHOO and AOL have ALREADY COMPLIED!).

or how about

war on terror to war on privacy

Combine with the "Patriot Act" this is not a "so called danger of intelligence gathering" this is real danger and it is happening now.

2. I then make a few IP phone calls using SKYPE (which can be traced without a TAP).

Do you need a warrant to obtain the IP address of an ISP subscriber, (most judges wouldnt know what an I.P. address is). If the government has a number of passive probes sitting in various parts of the Internet back bone they can "see everything" that is not encrypted.

Is the encumbant legal system ready for this??
Has the privacy within your home etc been breached??

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Belief gets in the way of learning

Tom, what are you thoughts on a Constitutional Amendment quaranting a persons privacy within the accepted norms (read exceptions)?

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Account frozen...

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Account frozen...

It also helps you avoid jury duty.

It also helps you avoid jury duty.

I've been on three juries, twice foreman...I'll remember that during the next voir dire...it always helps to tell one of the attorney's to piss off.

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Account frozen...

Your argument is sound in the 20th century, but how about the 21st century? Consider the following scenarios

1. I am composing an e-mail in the privacy of my home, I am discussing some rather controversial political topics, like ID, Abortion, Racism with a good friend of mind and am very frank about my views. However i am using GOOGLE mail, so everthing that i send is stored within Googles DB, (NEVER DELETED) i then go to the GOOGLE search engine and perform a few searches... i wanted to get some pronography for my wife and i to look at, since she has certain tastes that are not 'easy to come by' (these are also stored in the GOOGLE history and traced back to me by the COOKIE / EMAIL account cross reference).

Google Must Hand Government Information About Searches - March 15 ... The U.S. government is already exercising its 'HEAVY HAND' (MS, YAHOO and AOL have ALREADY COMPLIED!).

This is not a "so called danger of intelligence gathering" this is reality, it is happening now.

Do you think this information could be used "in the wrong way".

2. I then make a few IP phone calls using SKYPE (which can be traced without a TAP).

Do you need a warrant to obtain the IP address of an ISP subscriber, (most judges wouldnt know what an I.P. address is). If the government has a number of passive probes sitting in various parts of the Internet back bone they can "see everything" that is not encrypted.

Is the encumbant legal system ready for this??

First, the judges I have seen are quite sophisticated about these "modern" issues. And the rule is still as I stated: records of your communication are usually fair game, while the substance may require judicial approval.

Now, some of the other legal questions you raise have twists that make privacy problematic: for instance, if I, a private citizen, can "google" the content of your posts on these boards, then you probably don't have a privacy right that would require police to get a court order. If no member of the public can see the content of your posts (on message boards, in chat rooms or by E-mail), then an order for electronic surveillance would probably be required before police could see them.

You should know that police have had the ability to get this type of phone record, without a warrant, for decades. Such records may show that a call was made from one phone to your phone, but the content of that call is not revealed. Say you were being threatened over the phone, and you recognise the voice (or the caller identified themselves), it is very relevant evidence that on the date and time you received the call, that person's phone called you. This tends to foreclose the claim that you were mistaken as to who was calling, or that an imposter made the actual call. But to tap the phone, that requires a judge's permission based on probable cause.