er, this was me

I thought you were me!

I u sed to drink way too much Dr. Pepper as well. I've since stopped drinking soda on a regular basis (6 cans a night) to 4-5 a week. I now eat caffeine pills to get my fix when I have a late night. Dr. Pepper used to get me through late night MMORPG sessions in gradeschool/highschool, but with college I've since given up MMO's.

I got one of those emails about 4 years ago... I actually replied and chit-chatted with the guy for a while. Even got a hold of him on gmails chat. There's a lot of these out there, nothing new. I even have the log of my convo on my website (see sig and click Tricky Scammers). I'm still kickin, so I wouldn't think much of it.

They are kept on life support by government at the behest of the unions. GM wasn't bailed out for our benefit - it was bailed out for the benefit of the UAW.

Agreed-ish. Well, it was bailed out so that the unions would re-elect the politicians.

Teacher's Unions are not the sole problem. I do agree that the majority of teacher unions are little to no help in today's society. If you compare the salaries of a union teacher vs a non-union teacher (private schools) they can vary widely. Particularly among smaller suburban catholic schools. Its been scientifically shown that expectations create who you are (citation needed). If your teacher constantly says your dumb, I wouldn't expect you to get it right, etc, the student will will become that person. If the teacher says 'your going to do great one day, keep up the good work' that student is going to become great. Now yes thats not 100% true, but expectations from your teacher is a huge influence on a student's performance. This thinking can also be applied racially.... but thats for another time. There will always be victims of circumstance, and teachers that are better than others. I think we need to improve the education for teachers, and perhaps have some sort of personality assessment. FTFA teachers that expect a lot from the students, get a lot from the students. So rather than saying FIRE THE TEACHERS! maybe we can do some retraining. Just some thoughts. Here's a penny.

There are definitely problems in the U.S. educational system. This article was pretty cool, and they do state that their metrics aren't perfect, but lead to some valuable insight. I'd like to see further studies on this.

Private schools often has a similar problem in the U.S. because the school does not want to lose any money (a students tuition). There is no support for teachers to remove trouble makers. Its sad, really. Education standards are plummeting. Just look at my poor grammatical skills and use of smileys :-(. Honestly though, I attended K-8 in a public system and 9-12 in a private system. I don't come from a wealthy family, but I was raised with many books in the home. Its statistically shown that families where books are home tend to create students with better grades. I was highly encouraged to read throughout my life. I definitely believe that reading and math should be supported in the home. Teacher's should be more positive towards there students, and that troublesome students should be given special attention. They should be held to the SAME standards (not easier side classes). But should be given more support. As for comp-sci classes, HAH. I remember in 6th grade, we were graded on how fast we could type. My teacher had a paragraph for us to type and we had to do as much of it as possible within 30 seconds. I was the only student in the class to finish the paragraph, in 22 seconds. I reversed an i and e (like their/thier) and she docked me points :-(

I agree wholeheartedly. In fact, its a support/sales position to do everything within their bag of tricks to hold onto you as a subscriber. Some companies make it ridiculously convoluted to cancel.

Cable Television originally was a pay-for service that offered no commercials. That disappeared. I hope Hulu may keep an ad based version, with a commercial free subscription version. If not, then back to Arr be Pirate! :-(

I did not complain about devices (the Iphone). Rather, just data plans. Well, all their cellular plans in general. I do not own a single apple device, but that will not stop me from pointing out the obvious fact that there is an oligopoly. Back in 84? the telecom Bell was broken up. Over time many of those have merged basically recreating the monopoly of Bell, under the new name AT&T. The oligopoly controls around 90% of the market.