JanYpe

The new standard, passed at the meeting in a 10-5 vote, now reads, "Explain the impact of the writings of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Sir William Blackstone." By dropping mention of revolution, and substituting figures such as Aquinas and Calvin for Jefferson, Texas Freedom Network argues, the board had chosen to embrace religious teachings over those of Jefferson, the man who coined the phrase "separation between church and state."quote> "Embrace religious teachings"? That buzzing sound you hear would be Voltaire spinning in his grave. The man was a deist, like Rousseau and Jefferson, and had some strong things to say about the detrimental influence of organized religion. Also about poor history as it happens: "History is a pack of lies we play on the dead." And quite apart from pushing this agenda of "religious teachings", it's absurd to ignore an American thinker deeply involved in the birth of the nation in favour of a selection of thinkers who will no doubt be presented without any sort of proper consideration for the widely differing periods and circumstances they lived in. (Aquinas: 13th century. Calvin: 16th century. Hobbes and Locke: 17th century. Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu and Blackstone: 18th century.) Originally posted by: Duke87 Er.... it looks to me like there's one question that's being reworded and the new wording doesn't include Jefferson's name. That's not "revisionist history" in and of itself, although it does seem to be intended to introduce a more pro-Christian bias. A lie of omission, perhaps?quote> No, this is good ol' revisionism. You can't just pick some big names and pretend that periodization and context don't matter. That's treating history like it's just some nice stories set in a far away land called 'The Past (here be dragons)' They took a perfectly normal, unbiased, question about figureheads of the enlightenment, from a reasonably defined period and directly relevant to world and US history, and turned it into a toothless question that is basically "Regurgitate whatever brief nonsense we told you about six dead white guys who lived across 500 years and liked going to church a whole lot." I don't really know what the best way to overcome this is. It's tempting to want to decentralize things (why does the whole state have a board of ed deciding these things? Can't the counties and municipalities handle that?), but that would really just breed greater diversity of bias, not combat it. Not much of an improvement per se, but it's certainly not the opposite of one, at least. I would say that parents ought to be actively involved in educating their children, but that assumes the parents aren't fools themselves... which is probably not a great assumption. ....ultimately I suppose you just gotta sigh and surrender to the fact that it's just another unavoidable flaw of humanity that people will be wrong about things. quote> Or maybe just let people who actually know the subject decide, instead of a collection of loons with an agenda who manage to get themselves elected to these boards. Natural sciences? Get some science teachers. History? Get some historians, because this board couldn't tell a decent history curriculum from a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. There is no adequate reason to politicize education like this. Originally posted by: Patricius Maximus This also demonstrates why there should not be state education of children quote> No it doesn't. Originally posted by: Easy Bakes According to USA Today, the board also voted to strike the word "democratic" from references to the U.S. form of government, replacing it with the term "constitutional republic." Texas textbooks will contain references to "laws of nature and nature's God" in passages that discuss major political ideas. quote> Nice of them to keep the Declaration of Independence in the history books So i guess when they come to the part about who wrote the Declaration of Independence its going to say no one knows who wrote the most poilticaly significant document of that eraquote> I think you'll find it was written by our lord and saviour Jesus Christ (a proper middle class white guy, but in robes and sandals) and handed down from the heavens by a choir of angels. Or printed by some sort of divine fax machine. The scholarly debate on that is ongoing. I guess in Texas all is for the best, in the best of all possible worlds.

From the article What about the endo-pot already on our skin? Can it get us high? "Theoretically, yes," said Bíró. But, while our skin is constantly pumping out its own type of hash, even if you chewed your arm to bits, he continued, there isn't enough to have a psychological effect.quote> Fine practical advice there. Originally posted by: N_O_Body Pot is still a bad idea. quote> Then again a lot of things are a bad idea. Pot is about as bad an idea as alcohol is, and arguably a much better idea than tobacco.

Originally posted by: Zelgadis Originally posted by: N_O_Body Buick is the test-bed for Cadillac. New things that are destined for the Caddy line are brought out on Buick first. At one point both Buick and Oldsmobile were test beds, but the Olds line had to die because of the lack of popularity. quote> I can see how that was once true, but I'm afraid I can't see how that applies now. It seems rather clear from both marketing and product line that Buick and Cadillac are now aiming at two entirely different audiences. Buick seems to be targeting the lower-end side of Lexus and other makers of large, whisper-quiet, smooth cars. Cadillac has morphed into an Audi/BMW fighter, with emphasis on speed and performance. For the moment, GM isn't making hardly anything on Pontiacs or Buicks. (I used to sell cars, and I know a lot about the Big Three profit margins, particularly for GM, since we were a Cadillac/Hummer/Saab/Subaru dealer.) Cadillac was really the only GM division making any real money when the poo hit the fan. As for Saab, yes, it's been in trouble for a long time, but only because GM drove it into ruins. Selling it to a quirky little company like Spyker was just perfect. It's Saab's best chance to be revived into a brand which once again has character. ISF quote> And character is nice. Unfortunately Spyker´s main quirk so far has been its spectacular ability to avoid turning any sort of long-term profit, so the Saab brand isn't exactly out of the woods just yet.

I agree with duke here, we should stick to the Olympic classics. Why include events where athletes compete and push the limits in sports that people around the world care about, when those athletes should be racing chariots, running around in full suits of armour and trying to kill eachother in hand to hand combat. (all part of the original games) There's no reason to limit the games to the summer events that isn't arbitrary.

In the west, adultery isn't ­punishable by ­stoning. Instead, if you're famous (and even if you've only committed virtual adultery by text) it's punishable by kicking. Step out of line and the press will encircle and kick you. And kick you and kick you and kick you until you beg for forgiveness. At which point, if you're lucky, they'll chortle and sneer and move on. They must be ­frightfully proud.quote>

Originally posted by: DocRorlach Luck, unfortunately, will have little to do with. Political apathy among voters, negligable differences between what is strangely enough called "main stream" parties, and a few crazy spoilers on the far right and far left: that is todays political landscape in Europe. Net result: the "fall" will make no real difference because in order to form the next government a lot of power brokering will go on (and has been going on from the moment Labour walked out). The Dutch politicians are no better or worse than the rest of the bunch elsewhere in the world. For all their fallacies and mind-boggling shortcomings, the UK political parties offer the last vestige of the left-middle-right divide between Labour, Tories (equiv. to US Republicans) and the Liberals.quote> Well that´s true enough in a way, but I guess I have a hard time seeing the divides of the sligtly loopy political landscape of Britain as something laudable. Originally posted by: Jasoncw Thanks for explaining that, that makes sense. Best of luck to the Dutch government between now and the early elections. quote> It´ll be an interesting year for politics at least. You always need to take opinion polls with a grain of salt, but the latest polls don´t show a single party with a clear majority in seats, giving the largest party somewhere about 26 seats. Since a majority cabinet requires 76 seats any scenario for a workable cabinet would require a four party coalition, the last time that happened was in the seventies. Originally posted by: mightygoose wow, i'd expect this of the italian government but holland. oh well learn something new every dayquote>Fun fact: since WWII, only six cabinets have survived to see the next regularly scheduled election. (red bars fell, blue survived, the number next to the bars shows how many days a cabinet was in power)

BBC summary: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8525742.stm After the messy cabinet reaction to the Iraq inquiry's report, this was pretty much inevitable.

Nice mosaic, and a very promising glimpse at the town center.

Rule of thumb: do not try to fix any problem by restricting the actions of the people when a solution that instead restricts the actions of government is available.quote> Haha, yes it's much better allow yourself to constantly get screwed by companies than to allow the possibility that the big evil government might possibly someday decide to do something. You guys have to be the most hilarious proletariat ever.

Originally posted by: Shadow_Assassin Ah. I should have mentioned that I'm talking about a small group of middle aged women who have no interest in partying. They want to see things and get some sense that they have actually been to Europe. For some of them, it is their first visit there.quote> Thanks for the clarification - my point still stands re. visiting the Netherlands. It has a lot of history, art museums etc etc, and would probably be more interesting than Belgium. Why not check both countries out over the weekend, they're only a short distance from each other anyway.quote> To be fair to Belgium, there is plenty to experience in Brussels itself, as well as in places like Antwerp, Bruges, Ghent and Liège. Given the timeframe it would certainly be possible to visit both countries. I´d echo Amsterdam as a good place to go. There are loads of sights to see and museums to go to, while at the same time it´s accessible/touristy in a way that not every city is. To get from Brussels to Amsterdam would take about 2:45 hours by train, and from Amsterdam it would be a short hop to Hillegom.

Originally posted by: Easy Bakes Online Donation for The Red Cross. Donate To Haiti Relief Herequote> Alternatively, consider Doctors Without Borders, who have been involved with medical projects on the island for some time. Originally posted by: Barbarossa Originally posted by: JanYpe Just to illustrate these numbers, this summary gives some idea of the population numbers exposed to the quake: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/pager/events/us/2010rja6/index.htmlquote> You know, this is something I do not often do, but I feel the need to make my point, which was misunderstood: Originally posted by: mightygoose estimates for casualties now are around the 30,000 mark, down from the half a mllion 20 hours ago...quote> Exactly as I expected. Never trust numbers immediately after a disaster. Hypothetics are all well and good, but they can easily fall wrong if all factors are not included. None of this is meant to diminish the catastrophe for poor Haiti. I simply do not like to see people lose their heads in a fit of excitement. Barbarossaquote> I'm not sure where you're seeing anything hypothetical in my post, the link contains a straightforward map of where the earthquake hit in relation to where the pop. numbers are.

Boy, 4, Chooses Long Locks and Is Suspended From Class: “It’s a trade-off,” said one board member, Gary Bingham, an insurance agent, in an interview. “Do the parents value his education more than they value a 4-year-old’s decision to make his own grooming choices?” quote> Ah yes, his education. All that nose to the grindstone fingerpainting and colouring within the lines that was threatened by this subversive behaviour. The GoogleAds for hair extensions that showed up under the article add a nice touch.

Originally posted by: toroca Actually, 500,000 is not at all out of the realm of possibility, unfortunately. You can't really compare the 2004 tsunami because that was a very different event. Most of the death toll in that event was due to the tsunami itself and the sheer power of the quake. That quake was more than 100 times as strong as this one was, but it also struck an area that is more familiar with earthquakes, and which takes at least SOME steps to mitigate damage caused by them. The difference here is that Haiti is not a typically earthquake prone country. They build things to withstand hurricanes instead. And those kinds of buildings do not take the shock of a strike-slip earthquake well at all. They essentially lurch and fall over. The reports I am seeing are estimating that between 40 and 70% of Port-Au-Prince has been flattened. In a city of three million people, that could easily lead to 500,000 dead. Obviously, we all hope it won't be anywhere near that high, but I am afraid that it will easily top 100,000 based on all the reports coming out of the city from people on the ground there. This will probably end up having been the second or third deadliest earthquake in the past five centuries.quote> Just to illustrate these numbers, this summary gives some idea of the population numbers exposed to the quake: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/pager/events/us/2010rja6/index.html

That library building still looks awesome, great update.

2) North by Northwest? 5) Beirut

Come on, there's more to good movies than action and humor. You can only think the Godfather revolved around action if you slept through 80% of it. Casablanca is a drama with a strong story, setting and characters. Does it show its age in places? Obviously. But on the whole it is a good movie, and it's rightly regarded as a classic. "People standing around talking" did you look away when scenes like this came on or something? To stick with films featuring Peter Lorre, the original M is certainly worth watching.

10) 1993

6) Shinkansen? Jaffa

1) Carbon Copy 5) Spock 7) Death

Lilliput

3) HMS Beagle 5) Large Hadron Collider Nice started out as a Greek colony, like Marseille, so did the name come from Nikè (goddess of victory)? 9) 1867-1918

4) Peter Sellers as President Muffley in Dr. Strangelove. 7) Matarazzi? 10) Assur.

1) They went for perjruy, so I'm guessing they tried to make obstruction of justice stick as well. 4) Personifying objects or projecting human characteristics (emotion, thought etc) onto them. 7) Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. :edit: Oops, totally missed Joe 90's post there.

Originally posted by: N_O_Body Well, it is all very loud and somewhat disappointing. There seems to be a clear lack of finesse and a generous portion of acting school going on.quote> A lot of the writing is about as subtle as a chainsaw. Icarus base? Really? None of the writers thought to themselves "hey, maybe that's laying it on a bit too thick with the foreshadowing"? Rush is the most interesting anti-hero of the bunch, and the military commander is acting like a typical jerk who has been Shanghaied. He just isn't with it, is he? Too much yelling and not enough thinking for someone at the field command level. He looks more CIA than military.quote> You mean colonel Young? Not sure I agree there, he was at least vaguely interesting and human. For me the Rush character lost believability once I remembered that this is the guy from 'The Full Monty', 'Trainspotting' and 'The 51st State'. Although I did like his Butch Cassidy quote in theTime Travel episode. Was that just a throwaway storyline though, like they never went to that planet in the main timeline? It is an awful mixed bag. Maybe in the next season they'll find some way to bring some order out of the chaos. I wonder who has the genes to sit in the chair? quote> Probably someone who hasn't been a lot of use so far. Senator's Daughter maybe.