"Scottish people", "destiny", "independence". Quaint notions that assume that inhabitants of an artificial polity with diverse ethnic and cultural origins are in fact a separate species ffrom the rest of us. The balkanization of otherwise stable polities is hardly the route to the unification of humanity. At best, it is jingoistic tribalism. At worst, it is self-destructive jingoistic tribalism.

Thank you for such a beautifully articulate piece. I happen to agree with the sentiments, but regardless of that, your literacy makes me think there is hope for slashdot.

This is a reminder that the current taxonomy should be retired and replaced with a DNA-driven scheme. This will happen when the US goes metric and FEMA sends blankets to Hades.

I genuinely love deserts you insensitive clod. But thanks anyway for voting deserts.

f!

Well put. The whole point of Common Core is to generate understanding. The poster above is typical of the reaction we have seen in Arizona. Parents, like the general population, are not too bright and tend to be reactionary about things they think they know. Common Core has been renamed to facilitate acceptance but is encountering steep resistance from parents and politicians. Getting kids to think critically about everything is anathema to the would-be theocracies of the Southwest. tl;dr AZ parents are scared little people, AZ pols are Luddite religiotards. Common Core doomed.

Can't happen in our town. The traffic department has made such a balls-up of the traffic lights that nothing is synchronized. You will not even find two adjacent lights synchronized to the speed limit. Besides, when you see the light half-a-mile ahead turn red you know how fast to go to hit the green. Do people adjust? No,. they just keep going at 5 to 10 mph above the limit, hit the red and sit there.

The court was wrong. The constitution and the Founders are quite clear about it - the government does not sponsor religion. It does not sponsor a specific religion, true enough. But neither does it sponsor ALL religions, nor any religion. And no, atheists are not happy with it. The ideal, as intended by the Founders, is that a government body does not perform a religious ritual of any kind at its meeting. Allowing a different religious ritual each meeting doesn't cut it. It's interesting how some state pols and courts imagine that making a prayer non-denominational somehow makes it non-religious. A prayer is a prayer is religious. How is that so hard to understand?

You've done a great job covering the major criticisms of charter schools. The Arizona charter school system exemplifies all of the problems, and more. The 'more' is the faith element. Many charter schools are religious and while the Catholics and Mormons (big in this state) are supportive of science teaching there are others teaching faith instead of facts. I accept that parents must be allowed to make education choices for their offspring, however execrable, but it should never be on the public dime. Another aspect that may be the tip of an iceberg is the corruption engendered by the absence of accountability. Some charter schools here get their supplies from a corporation run by the school's owners' cronies such that they pay over the top prices. Again, the taxpayer is footing part of the bill. To me, the most disturbing element is the lack of accountability. Once accountability is removed mostly bad things happen, true in any context but worse in any profit center masquerading as a public benefit.

I am so sick of you fucktards destroying slashdot with your absurd witchhunt. Every fucking comment section has been vandalized by Betatards. Do you really think Dice gives a rat's arse about a bunch of hysterical whiners screaming as loud as thay can in every comment section? Do you really think that if you spew enough mindless vitriol then Dice will meekly give up and cave in? I hope they shove Beta up your fat arses so you'll abandon the site and we get our comment sections back.

My Vaio is 10+ years old and never a problem. Granted, it's an outlier especially wrt the hard drive but still...

The headline says it all. Why on earth would a whistleblower be placed on trial?