It did, much to my disappointment. All mentions of other methods of teaching are those that have been imported. There was something about Prince Charles visiting in 1988, but it was only for the sake of analogy, and the British schooling system is rather lackluster. In fact the vignette seemed rather pointlessly antagonistic, but perhaps there was context somewhere between what the chapter itself described and the events of April 19, 1775 that I missed.

You think I'm joking - there has been a baffling increase in the amount of "Russia had it better" posts around here lately.

I bet you could link to some of those posts to add impact to your statement, if you wanted to.

Very perceptive that highly evolved alien life forms would dig Bill Evans, since he was one of them.

A thousand years from now someone will say: "America. Hmmm. Isn't that the place jazz was invented?"

A thousand years from now someone will say: "America. Hmmm. Wasn't that a country on the planet that humans made inhabitable, but only after turning it into a vast work prison for virtual entities knows as "corporations"?

"And why didn't those stupid sonsabitches in the 20th century do something about it? Humans...maybe we're better off with them extinct."

Yep, that's what they'll say.

And a helicopter! Surely that is equivalent somehow. Surely.

The sheer lengths of his tract and interview are impressive, and I am compelled by the numerous footnotes. Clearly, this is a work of profound augustness.

I do have a key objection, though, and perhaps you can lay it to rest—he doesn't seem to be in touch with modern practices in other countries; or at least I haven't noticed any mention of them in my cursory glances. Did you notice any?

I see you are skilled in the art of dad humour. It suits you, I think. To be honest.

That's pretty scary. I'm pretty sure we covered all of those in grade one, and it just so happens I was in grade one in 1995. The Ontario curriculum was a bit tougher, it seems.

Then again, asking an eleven-year-old to read and understand Thoreau or Shakespeare sounds like a classic Victorian misunderstanding of childhood development. Piaget may not be perfect (or up to date, for that matter), but educators believed some truly absurd things before then. Carroll was certainly a good pick, and a lot more accessible.

And... yeah, I think you know all the possible explanations for why the school system is broken already, so I won't bother rehashing old threads.

To be honest, I think perhaps the name comes across as a self-conscious conservative title, i.e. something you get called so often you adopted it as a moniker to pre-empt the insult. (Which, I guess, is the point.) But, hey, we all have lousy days. And weeks. And months. And years... I'm a little too young to be a life coach, but have you considered buying a really expensive car? That seems to be the standard solution to this kind of problem.

As for cells, the largest single-celled organism I know of off the top of my head is an ostrich or dinosaur egg (which doesn't really count since it's not fully alive for long, and generally holds something else), followed by the Mermaid's wineglass, a ridiculously large alga (up to 10 cm or about 4 inches.) There may be larger. In general, large single-cell organisms are unpopular because they provide a single point of failure and can't specialize, meaning they have to do everything at once, which gets cluttered. It's a little like running a mainframe with no service contract.

I think the most exciting thing about the Michigan Militia is the faint implication that Ontario might invade at any moment. It is sad that their website does not mention this. Oh, what could have been.

That one is a little less impressive, but kudos for investing the time and energy. It's creative in its own way.

Indeed there is! From now on, all citizens will be required to wear extremely delicate balloons tied to their ears.

I am genuinely impressed by that comeback.

Ooh, ooh! Now do one about a famous historical figure!

Your supposed counter-examples are all cases that do not violate the original co-evolution constraint. You claimed that an unfamiliar, non-adaptive bacterium would have a superior ability to evade the human immune system, when all medical evidence suggests that viruses are only able to keep ahead of the race by mimicking human antigens and mutating extremely rapidly. You claimed that a plasmid could "easily" be acquired by an ancient bacterium, even though analogous systems show that such extreme isolation can cause changes as dramatic as alterations in the genetic code. These ancient bacteria are disadvantaged in every imaginable way when compared against modern species, and to such an extreme degree that the point is meaningless to argue. It is comparable to discussing flying pigs.

Do you actually know anything about evolutionary genomics or is your entire life oriented around dismissing others to make yourself feel better, as your post history suggests? You've dodged every single one of my posts, done no work to "establish" anything, and brought up irrelevant examples. I don't think you should have gotten yourself into this conversation.

Hey, that's Sherlock Holmes!