There may be a few of you out there who didn’t grow up watching the A-Team on television — but are thinking about going to see the new A-Team movie in the theaters soon.
I thought it might be helpful if you saw what it was like before it was ‘just another cover of just another show’… enjoy!
It’s important to understand that what Apple has done with their iPad is more important for what computing will be like for everyone 8-10 years from now — than how it will impact the market between now and next Christmas. So this device is really a concept that competes with time and the slow-moving nature of consumers’ willingness to think outside the box.
But as revolutionary as it is, it also compares unfavorably this year with devices that are designed for the low-cost hi-tech market.
One example that I really like is the Mirus Classmate, an under-$500 netbook (available from WalMart.com and Amazon.com) that adds a touch-screen and stylus.
Even though this comes with the netbook-standard 1024×600-pixel screen (which I couldn’t live with for a personal laptop), the ergonomics look ideal to me for managing support tickets while roaming around a building. There is no need for special programming (you could even use Flash!) when developing for Windows XP — if Apple had used a scaled-down version of their own MacOS X (instead of their iPhone operating system), we wouldn’t be having this discussion. But to reach into enterprise markets, the iPad is going to have to add (by software update or otherwise) some rather banal features which Steve Jobs was OK with leaving out of the first-generation iPad.
H/t Examiner.com:
The Canadian Centre for Home Education (CCHE) has released the results of a research project titled: Fifteen Years Later: Home-Educated Canadian Adults (pdf).Studies suggest that homeschoolers succeed academically as compared to schooled peers, but do they grow into socially well-adjusted adults? This new study suggest that they do.
Findings
When measured against average Canadians ages 15 to 34 years old, home-educated Canadian adults ages 15 to 34 were more:
- Socially engaged. 69 percent participated in organized activities at least once per week, compared with 48 percent of the comparable population.
- Highly paid. Average income for homeschoolers also was higher, but perhaps more significantly, while 11 percent of Canadians ages 15 to 34 rely on welfare, there were no cases of government support as the primary source of income for homeschoolers.
- Happier. 67.3 percent described themselves as very happy, compared with 43.8 percent of the comparable population. Almost all of the homeschoolers (96 percent) thought homeschooling had prepared them well for life.
Yes, I’m sooooo lazy!
All of these require that you have a recent version of the Adobe Flash plugin installed.CARU (Children’s Advertising Review Unit of the Council of Better Business Bureaus), complained that Google’s GMail service didn’t do enough to prevent younger children from creating an account that might expose them to the internet garbage that normally lands in most normal email accounts. (h/t to bnet.com)
They pointed out that most other services ask the applicant’s age first, and then proceed to allow or deny access to the account-name creation step of the process — while GMail asks the applicant to create a user name first, then notes that persons must be 13 years of age, and then finally asks them their age.
CARU’s ideal that there are no children that will bother to try filling in an account-creation form a second time when told that they are too young, is much more telling about the idiots running that organization than the ‘sloppy and careless’ methods used by GMail to keep out youngsters.
I commented on bnet:
“So your kids are really, really stupid?CARU’s logic leads one to believe that kids are stupid enough to get stopped by the ‘other’ email services’ block on under-13 applicants.
If a child finds out that he/she cannot get an email account after submitting their under-13 birthday, only the really ignorant ones are going to be daft enough to not try lying about their age on the next try.
This is supposed to (somehow) be GMail’s fault?
If a child wants in, and you don’t ask for a credit card number (which is almost universally rejected by customers now as being too invasive), there is no way to keep the under-13 crowd out of your system.
This goes back to parenting, primarily.
An alternative (systemic) method would be for the services (ALL of them) to aggressively offer methods for parents to create sub-accounts with parental controls. AOL used to do this — does CARU honestly think there is no market for this now?
This is simply an attempt by CARU to appear authoritative and knowledgeable in a area where they have little clout.”
“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” -Vladimir I. Lenin
“The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother’s care, shall be in state institutions at state expense.” -Karl Marx
“Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.” -Josef Stalin
“By the year 2000, we will, I hope, raise our children to believe in human potential, not God.” -Gloria Steinem, women’s rights activist
“The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.” -Michelle Obama
Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that’s where it’s really at.” -William Ayers, American elementary education theorist
“Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.” -John Adams, Defense of the Constitutions, 1787
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.” -Ronald Reagan
“A recent trend in tutoring children is outsourcing. The students work at their computers in America, and their online tutors work with them from their computers in … India. Shocking? No. If you believe that the prime responsibility for educating children should rest on the parents, then ALL teaching outside the home is outsourcing. In America, of course, most people are used to outsourcing the job to the public schools. But our governments’ schools haven’t been doing so well. So there is growing competition. Now even from India. “ -Paul Jacob
“…in the spring of 1972, at Tulane University…students asked Alinsky to help plan a protest of a scheduled speech by George H. W. Bush, then U.S. representative to the United Nations – a speech likely to include a defense of the Nixon administration’s Vietnam War policies. The students told Alinsky they were thinking about picketing or disrupting Bush’s address. That’s the wrong approach, he rejoined, not very creative – and besides causing a disruption might get them thrown out of school. He told them, instead, to go to hear the speech dressed as members of the Ku Klux Klan, and whenever Bush said something in defense of the Vietnam War, they should cheer and wave placards reading, ‘The KKK supports Bush.’ And that is what they did, with very successful, attention-getting results.” -Sanford D. Horwitt, ‘Let Them Call Me Rebel’
“In 1930′s Germany, the new socialist government of Adolf Hitler (NAZI National Socialist Workers’ Party) began indoctrinating children in the quasi-military organization, the Hitler Youth, to inform on their parents should they overhear discussions subversive to the policies of the Leader. As the noose was tightened, local community organizers were appointed to watch their neighbors and were told to report subversive comments to the bureaucrats above them. Neighbors informed on neighbors, some for reasons of patriotism or loyalty, some from fear. A modern inquisition ensued; a terror to free thought and expression. Increasingly harsh penalties were meted out to those who dared to dissent.” -Bart Willruth
“If the population control measures are not initiated immediately, and effectively, all the technology man can bring to bear will not fend off the misery to come. [...] Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock.” -John P. Holdren, Assistant to President Barack Obama for Science and Technology, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST)
Parents upset over ‘leftist propaganda’ video (Salt Lake Tribune)
Now, it has been announced that our President is taking the opportunity (of a relatively captive audience) to spend some ‘bonding time’ with our kids on Tuesday, September 8th. Many parents who have found out about this are already organizing to pull their children out of school on that day because of it, and some school systems have announced that they are leaving it up to individual teachers (not parents) to decide whether to show the live broadcast during the school day.
As this is sort of a ‘first contact’ between Barack Obama and this fresh-faced audience, we don’t expect that he will plan to make major socialist inroads in their first sitting — but the principle of letting this individual, who so many Americans are being shat upon for wanting to keep some control over their financial, religious, capitalistic, and First- and Second-Amendment freedoms — seems a great way to goad Conservatives out into the streets (again) waving pitchforks and burning torches. If Obama’s intent is to encourage discontent, so that he can point and laugh at it (have all of you read up on Alinsky, like I told you to last week?), then this seems the logical next step.
There is already a very recent precedent for this kind of mind-grab by a politician who had delusions of being the philosophical leader of this country’s youth… (see one parent’s description of Al Gore’s presumptuous parent-free ‘teachable moment’… audio available). So we shouldn’t expect that anyone in his Party is immune from stooping that low again.
Greer Condemns Obama’s Attempt to Indoctrinate Students (Republican Party of Florida)
“While I support educating our children to respect both the office of the American President and the value of community service, I do not support using our children as tools to spread liberal propaganda.”
From http://www.ed.gov/news/events/advisory.html:
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
President Obama to Speak Directly to Students in National Address on Educational Success
WASHINGTON, D.C. – As children across America go back to school, President Obama will deliver a national address directly to students on the importance of taking responsibility for their success in school on Tuesday, September 8th at 12:00 PM EDT at Wakefield High School in Arlington. In advance of this address, the Department of Education is providing resources developed by and for teachers to help engage students and stimulate discussion about persisting and succeeding in school. The speech will be broadcast live on www.WhiteHouse.gov and C-SPAN. The speech is open to pre-credentialed media. The deadline to request credentials is 6:00PM EDT tomorrow, Thursday, September 3rd.
September 8, 2009
President Obama Delivers National Address to America’s Schoolchildren
Wakefield High School
4901 S. Chesterfield Rd.
Arlington, VA 22206
Media Pre-set: 6:00 AM to 7:00 AM (All equipment must be dropped at the site by 7:00 AM; media will not have access to their equipment from 7:00 AM to 10:00 AM.)
Media Access: 10:00 AM
Throw: 60 ft.
Cable run: 600 ft.
Live truck parking: Trucks should enter the entrance off Dinwiddie Street and will be directed on site. All live trucks must RSVP with vehicle information. Trucks must plan to park by 7:00 AM. Live truck operators must bring cable ramps.
Media entrance: Entrance number 2, off Dinwiddie St.
Media Coverage: This event is open to pre-credentialed media. To request credentials, please RSVP online at: www.WhiteHouse.gov/the_press_office/MediaRSVP-EducationAddress-9-8-09/. The deadline to RSVP is 6:00PM EDT tomorrow, Thursday, September 3rd.
All names submitted for credentials must be accurate and reflect the identification media presents at check points for entrance. RSVPs do not guarantee access. You will receive a confirmation e-mail if you will receive a credential to cover the event.
Contact for logistical and planning purposes only: Johanna Maska at jmaska@who.eop.gov
Materials distributed to schools in advance of the presentation:
prek-6.pdf [mirror]
7-12.pdf [mirror]
UPDATE from ResistNet.com: “Whaddaya know– the White House has edited it’s “teaching materials” for the big Obama Youth speech. They’ve deleted the line about “helping the president” from teacher’s talking points after admitting they helped the Department of Education create the teaching tasks. Whitewashing…it’s the Obama way. Nothing else has changed, and the administration is hoping this will placate parents. The text of Obama’s speech remains a secret.”
We’re recommending, instead, that you watch other instructional videos with your kids. Just for fun, here are a few to get you started:
You are smarter than a fifth grader. no doubt. There is no need for you to retake school. Keep on doing your brain excersise like sudokus and crossword puzzles, and you’ll soon be smarter than a sixth grader! Good work!
This is another from the mailbag (thanks, Roger!); I really liked it:
“An eye witness account from New York City, on a cold day in December, some years ago: A little boy, about 10-years-old, was standing before a shoe store on the roadway, barefooted, peering through the window, and shivering with cold.A lady approached the young boy and said, ‘My, but you’re in such deep thought staring in that window!’
‘I was asking God to give me a pair of shoes’, was the boy’s reply.
The lady took him by the hand, went into the store, and asked the clerk to get half a dozen pairs of socks for the boy. She then asked if he could give her a basin of water and a towel. He quickly brought them to her.
She took the little fellow to the back part of the store and, removing her gloves, knelt down, washed his little feet, and dried them with the towel.
By this time, the clerk had returned with the socks. Placing a pair upon the boy’s feet, she purchased him a pair of shoes. She tied up the remaining pairs of socks and gave them to him… She patted him on the head and said, ‘No doubt, you will be more comfortable now.’
As she turned to go, the astonished kid caught her by the hand, and looking up into her face, with tears in his eyes, asked her. ‘Are you God’s wife’?”
I have already seen a heap of this crap in my son’s third-grade homework and texts.
Remember when our parents used to complain about the ‘new math’? Well, apparently it wasn’t enough to permanently stomp out the idea that textbook producers must out-do the methods of textbooks past… new curriculum must be significantly different (and will be assumed as ‘better’) from older teaching methods because … we wouldn’t want a child to feel like they aren’t doing as well as the rest of the class, now, would we?
Better keep your desk well-stocked with batteries; because the only way your kids are going to survive is by having a calculator by their side for the rest of their lives.
“Would you like fries with that?”
Is Your Child a Math Moron? (LewRockwell.com)
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| J. Daniel Oblak, Indianapolis, IN 317/345-7006 mobile |    |