"Coincidentally, they also have the lowest wages, and the lowest quality of life."

I think he said it pretty good. Does the average wage make up for the 0.75%? Quality of life? ND is number one in your book....ever tried living there? I have. Not again.

"In other words we are told things are bad by UNIONS so they can demand more pay raises & more expensive toys in the classroom. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. EVERYBODY has a bias..... it's just a matter of digging to discover it."

I don't know where you are from, but I see the exact opposite. Our schools are being forced by the right to spend money on Ipods and such for each student. The teachers and the union are saying "we don't need this stuff, look at how great our test scores are". The right-wing is claiming the schools are struggling and we need to cut staff and increase spending elsewhere. Yeah, like an Ipod for each student is going to help.

Give a bad teacher technology and they will still be a bad teacher. Give a good teacher whatever tools you want, they will find a way to be a good teacher. Throwing money at it will not fix it, and this is exactly the point that our unions have been making for a long time.

Why do we have ipods going to each student in many schools across the country? Who is pushing this? I honestly don't know. Anyone with some insight?

"If a political party decides what ideas it supports based on what's likely to get it elected, that rises some questions about what its purpose is in the first place."

True, but this is what the republicans do (and democrats, but that is not this discussion). Look at the issue of abortion, government spending, jobs......do you think they really care about any of these? No. They are pushing an agenda of lowering the taxes for the wealthy, concentrating the wealth among the most wealthy. How people still vote for it is beyond me. They claim to be fighting for whatever gets the votes.....they may even name the bill after that cause. In the end, the content of their agenda is often counter to what they claimed. Not sure why voters do not seem bothered by this and vote elsewhere. Ron Pauls supporters seem to understand this, which is why NONE of them will vote for Romney. All of Pauls votes are going to Obama, or going unused.

Now here's the kicker: In any school, the teachers are the minority. Here's an extreme sample: When I taught, there were 210 employees of the (tech school, then state collegiate) campus, but only 42 faculty. Yep... forty-two actual teachers on a huge campus.

I am not thinking this is a very common ratio for a typical public elementary or secondary school. In my experience, 80% teachers. 5% administration. 5% maintenance. 2% IT. 3% secretarial. 5% misc. This assumes cooks and bus drivers are private employees.

While I agree with your conclusions, and sympathize with you, you are clearly not the average type 2 diabetic. You must admit that. Most every study i have read, along with those I know who have had type 2, have shown far better results than yours simply by losing weight and exercising. Your condition is clearly more severe, and possibly from a different cause.

The vast majority of those with Type 2 could help their cause with a bit of self care. Kudos to you however for taking those steps first and going for the meds second. Everyone else just wants an excuse and a pill.

The device was not intended for those without a Bb phone. For those that have one, it works quite well. When comparing to my wifes IPad, it stacks up nicely. Sitting by eachother surfing the web, the playbook seems to shine in many areas. The drawback is the smaller screen size, but it fits in my jacket pocket (a large internal pocket, but still a pocket) where she needs a backpack for her ipad. The only website that seems to work better for her is google maps. Not sure why, but it always locks up on the playbook. Most other sites seem easier to navigate on the playbook.

Also, having a 3G connection anywhere (so long as I have my phone) without needing a data plan, is pretty sweet.

When we travel, we take the playbook and leave the ipad at home. Even over wifi the playbook just seems to work better for most things...can't put a finger on it.

Even to this day, in the northern US, we have schools where teachers cannot mention dinosaurs without having to deal with irate parents the next day. Sad. At least here in Wisconsin, this nonsense seems to be spreading.

"I bet if global warming screws up your grand-children's lives, you will still blame liberals."
Best line I have read today...

I was once a republican. Still am by most definitions. There is no way I can vote for a party that has become so anti-science and lacks common sense. Risk management!?!? No way, lets just blame liberals.

Stop spreading pointless fear!

From your own article: "In the past decade, bats were the cause of 24 of the 26 human deaths from domestically acquired rabies. Only 2 of the 24 cases attributed to bats had bites definitively reported. "

Some commons sense is in order here. This is over a DECADE!

You might like to know that being salary doesn't exempt you from overtime. Just saying...... that isn't how the law works in the US anyway. Many companies pretend to not know this until you remind them.

Also, the formula for overtime is often different. It is often closer to half-time pay for salary employees.

The problem is, you prove to us time and time again that you can't. We trust you to do some small task, and it blows up, and we are left to clean up the mess.

We let you have Iphones, managed yourself, and then your phone gets stolen and you are upset that company data was on it. One of us gets fired. Go figrue.
In an older example. We let you build some neat tools with Access, that you then roll out to your department and share with the company. Pretty soon it crashes and burns, like all Access projects eventually do. IT gets blamed for letting it happen. One of us gets beaten and then fired.

I disagree entirely. The users I have that are asking for Ipads and Iphones and Droids, want them entirely for status. So far, they have both proved to be less reliable, and less productive than the standard Windows Laptop and Blackberry setup. The support costs on our Apple and Droid products is at least an order of magnitude higher than our Windows/Blackberry combo.

At our organization, the tablet is already dead. Everyone has realized it is a joke for productivity. The executives have already dropped them on my desk and are now asking for new laptops and netbooks.......with Windows 7.

While the tablet craze is dead, we are still battling the Iphone and Droids. They are strongly desired purely for the status. The users requesting them know nothing about them other than seeing someone else have what they don't. After we hand them out, we can check the usage and see that they are not being used.....just carried around.

I have sent 3 reports to Google Maps. All three were fixed quickly, and on all 3 occasions google emailed me to ask if it now looked correct. Perfect.

I agree with you, but the part you need to expand on is number 3. What punishments should be used? Come up with a list. As a former teacher, I can assure you it is not easy. There are few things a teacher can do to actually punish students. Once they understand that.....game over.

Disclaimer: A good principal makes all the difference, but those are rare.......far more rare than a good teacher.