What it says to me is that you addressed one quarter of my complaints about this poster by saying things that I'll have to do a reasonable amount of research about to see if it's even true. Having seen no evidence or studies as to whether ADD "should statistically affect boys and girls equally", I can't even answer to it before I do some digging, but I notice you didn't bother to back that "fact" up with any citations, leaving it to me to do the legwork. On top of that, even if it turns out that false diagnoses are up, that doesn't give anyone dispensation to label all or even most of them as such without some sort of supporting proof.

So even assuming that I drop the entire line about the poster's comments about ADD diagnoses, you didn't say a word about all the rest of it. Considering that your argument fails to address much less rebut any of the other things I brought up, like claiming a majority of kids "do whatever they want" or "stuck to the fucking XBox for 12 hours a day" or that any reasonable percentage of parents "decided real parenting was too hard", and considering that these things (and the out-of-scope comments about ADD diagnoses) were to discuss why tenure shouldn't be used to protect someone like this from dismissal, I'd say you need to be a lot more thorough if you're going to join the argument.

Virg

The problem is that your argument isn't right-wing so much as old-fashioned. "Back in the old days" schools weren't doing the things you described, but they were doing things like failing kids out entirely and in the modern world that's no longer considered an acceptable solution. I agree that kids shouldn't be passed if they can't get the grades but they also shouldn't get dropped by the system and left to fend for themselves because the whole point of a public school system and mandatory education is to make sure that everyone gets educated, and the "good old days" schools didn't actually do a very good job of that. The whole concept of meals at school is that kids do better in school if they're not malnourished. Socializing children has been shown time after time to make for better educated kids. And sex education is education. Why would life skills not be a good thing to teach in a school?

Virg

This ranter didn't suggest that parents should parent, s/he said that parents in general don't parent. Reacting to that isn't a knee-jerk, it's indignation at a falsehood presented to cover up for being jaded.

This is true of the ranter as well.

This is nonsensical. You're blaming parents for working too hard to parent effectively and then you say that sometimes they do everything right and it doesn't matter. So you say that sometimes nothing helps, but you'll still blame them for the failure because they should have done more? Pick a message, please.

Maybe you could tell the ranter to do this as well.

Virg

This statement is crap, much like the parent statement, and it speaks directly to this person's ability to teach kids in this setting. Declaring that ADD diagnoses are "bullshit" is way outside the scope of a public school teacher unless that teacher happens to have a medical degree, and demonstrates a bias against something that they have no expertise to judge. Telling parents in general that they aren't doing their jobs or that even a majority of students are allowed to do whatever they like is simply untrue, and just because there are noticable kids who do this sort of thing doesn't by any stretch indicate that it's anything approaching common. Bitching about poor teachers being guarded by unions is a recent thing? My parents joined up with a dozen others fighting to remove an atrocious teacher more than forty years ago, long before the "fucking XBoxes" and "bullshit ADD diagnoses" that s/he rants against.

So, your "100% accurate" statement falls completely flat, and this person sounds so jaded that I'd want them out posthaste. Someone who's willing to make statements like this, even anonymously and outside work, can't possibly be taking a positive attitude into the classroom with them.

Virg

You're not paying attention to economics, as well as forgetting your history. China is undergoing an industrial revolution much like the U.S. did back at the open of the 1900s. They are doing massive agriculture and massive manufacturing, driven by cheap labor and a "smoke means progress" attitude from the government. Given those same conditions in our own country, we made a hellish mess of our environment too.

The author's contention is that, given the same motivation from the government, a command economy will more readily be able to handle the problem of pollution than a democracy because the government doesn't have to convince industry and the people to buy into it, they can simply demand compliance. That makes sense, at least from the relatively simplistic view. There are lots of problems with Communism, but getting projects done on a massive scale when the powers that be want it done isn't one of those problems. If China's government decided to "go green" tomorrow, you can bet that they'd get there a whole lot faster than the U.S. ever did.

Virg

The problem here is that encountering an errant office worker isn't likely to result in legal troubles for me, but encountering an abusive officer often does. More to the point, the concept that very few police officers abuse their powers is ludicrous in my experince with many police officers. The vast majority of officers don't maliciously abuse their power or do stuff that's extreme or egregious, but I've never met an officer who hasn't done stuff like running criminal checks on their neighbors just because they can or skating a traffic violation by flashing their badge to the arresting officer.

Part and parcel of the abusive officer's creed, this is. No, it's not necessary to be wrong to be mistreated by an abusive officer, because that's the definition of "abusive".

Virg

I don't see any disparity. "Right" in this context means "best" so it doesn't contradict "perfect".

Virg

You still haven't backed up your statement, since toxic isn't carcinogenic and more importantly, you didn't cover whether there's really stuff like that in there, whether non-lead paints contain stuff that lead paint doesn't, and whether painting more often to deal with things like fading makes for more released toxins.

Also, huffing is dangerous independent of the chemicals used (people can and have died from using helium to talk funny, and that's completely inert), I've never seen a case where someone was caught huffing house paint, and the whole point of huffing is to super-concentrate the fumes because under normal use it doesn't have any effect.

Virg

What does this have to do with the discussion? If you're arguing that more money should be spent on securing schools, then do so, but unless you're positing that the only way to secure schools with money is arming teachers, then your argument is off point. My point isn't in how tiny the threat is, it's the fact that arming the teachers is adding more threat than having them armed takes away, so it's a bad idea at any price.

Virg

Do you throw it somewhere that scavengers can't reach, and that doesn't result in the lead in the meat ending up in the environment at large? Didn't think so.

When your living of your own life results in an externality that can cause harm to others, it's the government's job to address it.

Virg

Declaring that arming teachers is a substantial improvement in security assumes that none of those teachers or guards will ever misuse their gun, have an accident with it or lose control of it, all to secure the school against the miniscule possibility of an armed assailant who said teachers or guards can take down without hitting any bystanders or getting shot themselves. I've never been a gun ban supporter but it's not hard to see the gaping holes in this argument.

Virg

This assumes that "removing lead from your environs" isn't also good for consumers, and plenty of tests show that it is a good thing.

Without citing what those "carcinogens" might be, this is just scaremongering drivel. Back it up or pack it up.

The level of lead exposure that the children will get from licking a roadway is vastly less than the exposure they historically got from old lead paints used in their houses. This is what normal people call reasonable risk management.

Virg

This doesn't follow logic at all. The concept that marriage has certain "special rights" both ignores the concept that it also has certain responsibilities that unmarried people don't have to deal with, and ignores the idea that (in a perfect world) anyone is free to enter into marriage and free to leave it. Your argument makes about as much sense as getting mad that people can incorporate a company and get into some "special rights club" that unincorporated people don't enjoy. It may be technically accurate but it's nonsensical.

Virg

This is a trivial positional problem to solve. Computers have been able to calculate this sort of thing since the Moon landings, so I don't see any insurmountable problems with pulling off doubling a target.

Virg

That's specifically how it works. The idea is that lots of small pieces are less damaging than the big chunk, because each little chunk can burn on its own instead of one big chunk making it to the ground. A bunch of small pieces reaching the ground do less damage than one big chunk (something the size of a house hitting the ocean is a tsunami, something the size of a city is a shockwave, and so on) so busting it up reduces the total damage by a huge amount even if total deflection isn't possible.

Firstly, setting up such a simulation is trivial so I'm sure it would be part of the plan. And to answer your question, vaporizing a big hole in one side would be extremely effective, since unlike an underground detonation there's no atmosphere in space. Turning a sizable divot in one side of an asteroid into liquid or gas would turn the divot into a natural rocket jet, as the matter blew off into space unrestricted by any air pressure. That kinetic energy would push the asteroid in a predictable direction, and that's the whole point of the operation.

Virg