Tag: us

No future in the heartland

On PEI sex is commonplace for girls as young as 12. It is not just oral sex but going the whole way in the school washroom on the floor. If you think I exaggerate have a real heart to heart with a teacher. Amazing to me for whom young girls were sacrosanct, boys of 18 think nothing of having sex with a 12 year old. The “Ho” look is now essential to fit in. If you don’t wear a thong, you are a loser. 30% of boys are on Ritalin. Think about this before you pass onto the next point. 30% of our boys have to take drugs so that they can cope at school and at home. Most of the really dreadful violence such as at Columbine does not occur in inner city schools but in middle class or even upper middle class settings. It’s the kids who have all the things who are most desperate. PEI sent a choir to France recently. One of the sights that struck the parents who accompanied the kids was not the Eiffel Tower but the fact that not one – not one – of the French kids was fat and ~50% the PEI kids were fat. Bullying is endemic and no longer linked only to boys. There have been girls who have killed girls and girl hazing is as bad as anything in the Paratroopers.

PEI is prince edward island, and the post is by rob paterson. i wonder which candidate has anything relevant to say about this? (yes i know it is in canada, but the us is the same, if not worse)

Inching towards Metric

The Metric Program of the National Institute of Standards and Technology has a bold, if Napoleonic, motto: “Toward a Metric America.” That is, a fanciful future in which we’ll buy decagrams of hamburger and liters of gas. Problem is, the Metric Program employs just 2 evangelists ‘hail, ye lone voices in the wilderness!’ to convert 281M recalcitrant American imperial-unit holdouts. Launched with much hope by the Federal Metric Conversion Act of 1975, the Metric Program 28 years later meekly soldiers on, advising federal bureaucracies and trying to pitch the system to – well, to anyone who will listen. The dynamic decimal duo really work only part-time on metric salesmanship. So it would seem: A spokesman for the program, when queried, didn’t know his own height in meters.

jeez people. NASA is switching to metric, and uses IP(v6?) too. i have long wondered what will happen first: us going metric, the world going IPv6, or the world going 100% unicode.

Metrication is the direct transition process that helps you to quickly, efficiently, easily, and relatively cheaply upgrade from any of the various old pre-metric measuring methods to the modern metric system.

heh. Personally, I’d like a Wikipedia for civilized people that uses metric units exclusively. Or actually, a chrome extension to auto correct pages to the proper units. And here’s 5 screw-ups that wouldn’t have happened with metric:

The fight over metric versus imperial measurements has some very real consequences. And with the US as the last holdout in the world, we’re likely to see more of these kinds of historical fuck-ups on occasion.

Shaky foundations

i am constantly amazed how shabby the financial infrastructure in the united states is. arguably at the bottom of the list of the civilized world. some data points

  • transactions based on checks
  • low quality bills that invite counterfeiting (making the higher denominations unusable)
  • the inability to process international credit cards at many locations

there are more indications, such as the absurd reliance on debt financing, but lets not go there.. i am all the more amazed that you can build the largest economy in the world on top of that.

Emigration to europe

I wonder how many Americans have applied for resident visas to European countries claiming political asylum from the current US administration. I certainly can’t be the first person in this country to think of such a radical departure from the norm. How many non-resident aliens will decide that America really isn’t the place they want to live in for the rest of their lives? How many will suddenly start looking at other countries if the US goes into another Great Depression, as some economic scholars are predicting? What will this mean for US-born citizens and their children? I mean, who wants to be from a country that is beginning to be so universally hated simply because the political administration is so damn clueless about foreign policy?

and then there is stuff like this.

Monolingualism

American colleges and universities graduated only 9 students who majored in Arabic last year. Only ~140 students graduated with degrees in Chinese, and only a handful in Korean. Only 8.2% of American college and university students enroll in foreign language courses nearly all in Spanish, French and German.

scary thought. curing english monolingualism won’t be easy.

Reign of the flyover territory

democracy is a curious beast. what began as a sensible balance of power between cities and the back country is shifting ever more towards the backwaters being in control. due to representational logic, landscapes with hardly a living being hold far more relative power than densely packed urban hubs. this holds true in both switzerland and the us. while the cities are generating the wealth that is then redistributed to the countryside, they do not get to decide over issues that affect this wealth directly. the democrats in the us took the laudable step of picking the first female to become minority leader. her only problem: she is too liberal for the barbecue hinterland, being from san francisco. seems its time to end this second middle age by setting up city states again. this would eliminate quite a few problems:

  • no more SUVs (no space)
  • no more urban sprawl (densely populated areas being preferable)
  • less firearms (again, no space to enjoy them)
  • less cults (easier access to higher education)
  • a slimmer populace (overweight isn’t fun in a city)

the future of politics

this is 21th-century politics. way to go, tara! Guys like Coble (as described by his staff), Tara’s opponent in this election, can’t even turn a computer on. What’s worse is that he is actively engaging as a committee chair in making policy for the Internet and related businesses. it may seem to happen in a land far away, but this is the watershed. if they (old media interests) win, you will be forced to be a diligent consumer, with no possibility to be creative. if tara wins, you will enjoy your digital freedoms in the future.

Neocon blueprint

the Project for the New American Century whose goal is to promote American global leadership wrote this blueprint for american leadership in the new century.

As the 20th century draws to a close, the United States stands as the world’s most preeminent power. Having led the West to victory in the Cold War, America faces an opportunity and a challenge: Does the United States have the vision to build upon the achievement of past decades? Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests? “What we require is a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States” global responsibilities. “Of course, the United States must be prudent in how it exercises its power. But we cannot safely avoid the responsibilities of global leadership of the costs that are associated with its exercise. America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests. The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire. The history of the past century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership.

Politics with a clue

tara sue grubb is running for the us congress elections in november.

There is much to learn and much to discuss before November. I have put myself in the bullseye to stand up for our rights as free thinking citizens. I tell you now, I am no perfect being. I may be young, but I have learned much and have the scars to prove it. I am jumping head first into this fire for many reasons. Once thing is certain. I am losing my personal life and privacy, subjecting myself to men and institutions of money, power and greed. I have no shame. My personal privacy is worth the sacrifice if it means preserving the privacy that is OURS.

What about a 26 year old female running against an aged, 18 year career politician? We are polar opposites in many ways. Despite the odds, whatever they be, I am as serious as a heart attack. You don’t have to be a senior politician to understand the concepts of liberty, laissez-faire and justice. You don’t have to be a mastermind to see the people of this nation have been pushed into estrangement. Finally, you don’t have to be a suit to change the way things are.

politicians that actually talk to their constituency? what a welcome change. tara, lets hope you can pull it off.