I don't think that saying the US is literate necessarily means that one must be saying that the US education system is working.

As a homeschooling parent, I have looked at a lot of different ways of educating my children. One of the ways that I have seen (although rejected for my family) is radical 'Unschoooling'. The premise of this method is that no one teaches children anything. Anything the child needs or wants to learn, they will seek out themselves. While I don't think this produces the best results, talking with Unschooling parents revielded an interesting result. Literally 100% of the children over the age of about 12 were literate. The could read, write, had reasonable vocabularies, and had no problem structuring their sentences.

Keep in mind that this isn't a self selected group of kids who's parents spent extra time educating them. These are kids who parents left the kids to figure out their education on their own. Only being their to answer questions that the child initiated.

Obviously not everyone becomes literate when left in a vacuum. So, what is the explination? I have thought pretty hard on this, as it is an unexpected and facinating situation. The best theory I have come up with is that it is hard to actually be illiterate in large parts of the US. I am not saying that it is hard being illiterate, which it most certainly is. I am saying that one needs to actually put effort into not becoming literate, or it will happen by accident.

I know it sounds crazy, but consider that Karmashock is correct that there are groups who actively shun education. Parents who will abuse their children if the children shows any interest in become educated. I have witnessed this first hand. It is sad but real. So, if we discount families and groups who are actually putting effort into being illiterate, we end up with situations where kids learn to read and write the same way that you learn what color your neighbors house is. You happen to see it so much that eventually, you just know it. Drive past a giant yellow M in front of a 'M'c Donalds, and eventually the kid picks up that M makes an M sound.

No, it doesn't. There is a good chance that you would not be dead. As long as you remain passive, you become an on going source of food for the tough guy to explote if he leaves you alive. The bad canning isn't insurance against the first raid. It is insurance against continual raids.

Accepted. And please understand. That was largely my point. I was responding to someone who pulled out the 'racist' card. It gets old and divides people, reducing all of our power to address the root problems as a larger group.

Since the user would not be choosing the disto, and the admin would not choose one without a menu, your continued insistance that " if the distro of choice of the user do not have a menu" keeps us exactly where we have been since you started commenting. You are not being sincere in your arguements.

You claimed many DEs don't even have a start menu. You are looking for ways that you could create a bad experience if you tried. This is a discussion on switching work desktops. The users will use the applications that are assigned to them. None of those need have the problems you complain about. So, we are exactly where we were before your last comment. You are not being sincere in your arguments.

This is where it becomes clear that you are not being sincere in your arguments. No one is suggesting finding the worst linix DE to switch out for Windows users. The conversation is about switching out Windows with a DE that behavies almost identically to Windows, including the start menu and key bindings.

Then you have poor reading comprehension skills. Read it again. Then read it a third time.

A ton of male only gyms got sued out of existance for refusing women members. The only reason that your wife's gym exists as a woman only gym is likely due to the same reason that 'ladies night' happens at bars. No men are interested in spending the money to sue over the illegal behavior.

Ooops. I thought you were trying to argue that ladies night were legal. On re-reading your original post, I see that I was mistaken.

I am not going to argue the garbage collector point. You are right that it also fits the bill for jobs women tend to refuse to do. My point with the plumbing is that women have an honest to goodness physical advantage when it comes to residential plumbing. Their smaller size means that they can get into places that a larger man simply cannot fit. This can lead to the difference between fixing a leaking pipe, and tearing up the floor, fixing the pipe, rebuilding the floor, and then replacing the floor coverings.

He did mean that, he also was racest. The two are not mutually exclusive. The discussion was about police abusing their power. The fact is, the police abuse thier power against all sorts of people. Saying that we should protect everyone from this abuse, and only protect black people (even if they have gotten the worst of the police abuse) is racist. It is stupid (as racism frequently is). Redmancometh's racism actually agrues against anyone who isn't black from considering police abuse to be a threat to themselves. Thus, he reduces the number of allies every single black person would have outside their own racial group. He would try to have me believe that if I only care about my safety and the safety of my family, beatings by the LA police department are of no concern to me.

That is one of the overwhelming stupidities of racism. It leads people to act against their own best interest because of some twisted sense of morals.

If the KKK went on a rampage as started kill 10 black people a day and 1 chinese, I would most certainly say that they should be stopped from killing people. How could you in good conscious say that they should just stop kill the black people?

It is sexist because getting raped can happen as a means of violence is just as bad as rape performed for sexual stimulation. I get that men getting raped is considered comedy by large portions of our society, but that doesn't mean that your implicit statement that it is ok for men to be raped is somehow not sexist.

YOU are the one who is being overly politically correct. PC culture does exactly what you do. Try to fix only problems that do not effect old, straight and white mails. You invoke Jesse Jackson as an example of someone who is rediculous, yet your speaking points are directly from his playbook. He would be the one arguing that only black people should be protected from abusive police. He would be trying to limit the conversation to "institutionalized racism".

You are acting as a wannabe Jesse Jackson, and yes, Jesse Jackson is a racist.

Getting paid from the time the phone rings to the time the issue is taken care of is not a good deal. If you are on call, you should be paid for being on call. I don't know that I would argue full wages, but certainly having a situation where your private time could be interrupted is providing a service that should be paid for.

Yep, Human Shield should be put on many a person's job requirement.

I am consistantly shocked by the number of people that don't know salary is not hourly. I have several friends who accept their employer docking them pay when they leave work early, but get no extra pay when they work late because they are "salary".