OT: Berkeley

Humor is subjective. Leftists trend towards the bitter variety.

Lots of people find me funny, but maybe that's just because I'm the boss.

Most countries spend less than 2% unless they are at war (like Ukraine who spends 4%):

If they had been arrested then 9/11 would not have happened. In what universe would this not have been a good thing?

More likely they would have ended up in Guantanamo or renditioned to some 3rd world country for torture.

Over 1/2 of the US discretionary federal budget is spent on the military. The other examples you cite are from the mandatory budget. Mandatory in the sense that if politicians mess with it they get unelected.

Your government is not one of peace, it is of privilege and your people have just elected the most obvious embodiment of that.

Good luck, we'll need it.

John

The meaning of Latin words has evolved along with the languages it has been translated into. It may be dead, but that doesn't mean it can't be reinterpreted as needs change...

Look at how the bible has changed depending on who was translating it. Latin doesn't change, just how it is translated.

I took Latin way back in the mid 60s. Hated it. Remember it though...

John

That's true.

That wasn't me!

The problem is that educational spending per student varies quite a bit fro m school district to school district. You don't spend $10,000 per year on e ach student. As an exaggerated example of what might be going on, if you sp ent $901,000 on one student in a hundred in a year, and $1000 per year on the other 99, you'd get the same average, but a very different outcome.

Even on a state by state basis the actual spending per student per year va ries from $19,818 in New York State to $6,555 in Utah, which is a 3:1 range .

Since your education spending per student varies from school district ot sc hool district, the real range is almost certainly appreciably higher

The teachers are probably right, in the sense that if you spent more money on the pupils that needed help you'd get better outcomes. The students from well-off families that currently benefit from the highest spending would d o almost as well in less well-funded schools, and the students of poor fami lies (who do tend to need more help) would do a lot better in better funded schools.

Australia has a less steeply sloped income distribution than the US, and an education system organised by states rather than school districts, but it still has a problem with the distribution of education funding, with too li ttle of the money going to those who need it most.

The Gonski report went into the problems this creates in some detail, and p roposed a solution. The report was commissioned by a Labour - left of centr e - administration, who started putting the proposed solution into effect. The current Liberal - right of centre - government is back-tracking.

Yep. I can't imagine any of my elementary school classmates not being able to find the United States on a map.

In junior high school we had to take metal shop, woodworking, drafting, and print shop, for starters. We could all operate a metal lathe, carve wood, make & follow drawings...basic life skills.

Perhaps most importantly, it demystified learning and mastering new things.

Cheers, James Arthur

A lot of things have vanished from our "education" system.

Like you, in junior high school, I had to take wood shop, sheet metal shop and drafting.

And the "girls" had to take home economics, cooking, sewing and typing... would be called misogyny now ;-)

American and West Virginia history classes were required of all.

As college-bound, I had to take two years of Algebra, and semesters each of plane geometry, solid geometry and trigonometry.

As well as the requisite social studies :-(

I didn't have to take, but it was an elective, General Languages, three months each of Latin, French, and Spanish (it was too soon after WWII for German to be allowed ;-)

I ended up taking 4 years of Latin and a year of French (thru high school).

I hadn't really intended to take French, but the powers-that-be insisted that one hour (in high school) be "study hall", so I couldn't take the two hour electronics shop course I wanted.

But the French class turned into a fortuitous event... I met my wife-to-be there ;-) ...Jim Thompson

Yes, but an apolitical civil service is a thing that never was, and never shall be.

The problem is not the views of the civil service, but that a small group like that should ever have such power in the first place.

Once you have such a group in power, they're ripe for overtaking.

America's left is largely funded at taxpayer expense. That's improper, and it should be stopped.

But I'd oppose any suppression of free speech or free association, as was actively pursued under Obama.

Cheers, James Arthur

That's a nasty libel, false, and irrelevant.

o There were white slaves and black citizens.

o That has almost no bearing on the principles laid out in the documents. That Romans used wheels in cruel machinery does not discredit wheels, or mean we disparage wheels, or machines using wheels.

Our founding documents lay out a plan whereby a common man could set his own destiny, without having it dictated to him by some ignorant (best case), tyrant, or do-gooder (worst case) on high.

They believed that overall a man is the best judge of his own affairs, and whenever possible, should be entrusted with them.

Those principles are timeless. The design is either true, or not true to its stated purpose. Slurring the designers is simply obnoxious.

Cheers, James Arthur

Right. National roads seem a sensible use of the national government-- perhaps to coordinate state efforts?

Other states' internal roads are fine. California's roads have gone to hell because Gov. Jerry Brown unionized state workers, who've taken over the state's budget with their demands (e.g., the teacher's unions).

Cheers, James Arthur

Larkin's funny. But noobs might need to see the Irish twinkle in his eye to get it.

Cheers, James Arthur

AIUI, those things are mostly banned in favor of teaching what sexual practices mustn't be disparaged and giving everyone a prize for not crying. Or 'for crying,' if that's your thing.

I went to a graduation just a few years ago. The valedictorian's speech was encomium for the group's mastering (if we're allowed to say that) the 'challenges' they'd all endured that year, and surviving that bitter test whole.

The 'challenge,' she explained, was that the school cafeteria had been under renovation, forcing the students to eat elsewhere on campus.

Once upon a time, a 'liberal education' meant being exposed to ideas and skills, in preparation for life in a free society.

Since Carter, it's become thirteen years of community-organizer training.

Cheers, James Arthur

Do you like Milo? I think he's brilliant, and a real hoot.

Same here in the UK; one way or another. The usual conduits are the BBC and the EU. But this has been going on under governments of various colours for decades and nothing ever gets done about it (which tells us all we need to know about our current model of democracy).

Free speech especially is highly toxic to Lefties, because the dogma they pursue is based on a combination of wishful thinking and outright lies, neither of which stand up to critical thinking and fearless scrutiny and therefore must be protected from same.

California now collects about 30 cents per gallon tax on gasoline, theoretically to maintain the roads. It's spent on other nonsense. The Dem politicians hate cars, except their own.

Where?

The top-end fee-paying private schools here in Britain (we call them "public schools" for some bizarre reason I've never understood) teach Latin and Greek on a pretty much compulsory basis. A long, long time ago, top academics would write their papers or substantial tracts thereof in Greek (Carl Jung was one such) but since this no longer pertains AFAIK, it's about time Greek at least was dropped IMV.