|
theseus51
|
read my profile
sign my guestbook
Name: David
Country: United States
State: Hawaii
Metro: Honolulu
Birthday: 12/26/1980
Gender: Male
Interests: I am a child of Generation E, so I chat online, sometimes watch tv, and RTS or poker games are sometimes used to cure boredom. Of course the usual hanging out with friends, or talking on the phone with various friends. My friends say I'm smart/witty, funny, and interesting. Heh what do they know. I'm also usually upbeat/positive with an overriding sense of sarcasm and rebellion against authority.
Expertise: Logic, Finance, Politics, Buddhism and Computer stuffs.
Occupation: Computer related
Industry: Government
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  theseus51
Member Since:
6/23/2002
|
|
| http://www.ninomiya.org/piccys/myhouse.png
Google maps finally has Hawaii for its street view thing. The image of my house isn't that clear, cause it's down an alley. But I think it's pretty cool. I looked up most of my chat friends who have street addresses that I know, and it seems they all live in the 'burbs. I guess that makes sense, since I met most of my chat friends playing video games or neopets. Not the type that would live in the inner city ghettos, super rural areas, or in mansions. =p
| | |
| http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120436493
Scared Of Planet Nibiru? NASA Would Like To Help
This has got to be one of the funniest questions I ever heard on NPR:
What is NASA doing to prevent the planet Nibiru from crashing into Earth and creating a disaster?
It's basically an interview with a NASA official, explaining that part of his job is to calm people down who email or call NASA and want to know what to do when the earth is going to end in 2012. I think the whole thing is funny. It's based on a civilization that made their calendar system a thousand years in advance, and when the calendar ends, supposedly the world ends. But in our society, we made our computer calendars end in 1999. I think they made their calendar a thousand years in the future, hoping future generations would add to it. I mean in our society, for the most part, we make written calendars only a year into the future, knowing it'll be updated when the time comes.
Plus do you ever wonder what happened to the Mayan civilization? They died off due to famine, civil war, and the Spanish invasion. I guess they never saw it coming.
| | |
| Apparently there was a report issued by the Pew Center on States, as to the ranking of the budget mess of each State. Here's how the two main local newspapers reported it:
http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091112/BUSINESS/911120315
Study: Hawaii in worse fiscal shape than many states
http://www.starbulletin.com/news/breaking/69892642.html
Hawaii's budget woes not as harsh as many other states', report finds
| | |
| http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20091029/NEWS01/910290350
Layoffs will hit 'thousands' if Hawaii furloughs are blocked - Rather than laying off teachers, like most other states did due to their bloated budget, Hawaii decided to furlough them. It means we have the shortest school year for public schools, 163 days. The next lowest is 173 days, and the average is 180 days. The trade off is that we have less instructional days, but also have smaller class sizes (due to no layoffs). If we restore instructional days, without more money, then the only other area to cut is teacher jobs.
The teachers could've taken the furlough days on training days, or holidays, to avoid cutting instructional days. But then they suffer the pay cuts without a day off. So the union opted to have the furlough days ONLY on instructional days, which was done on purpose to piss off the parents, so the parents would protest and complain to the Governor and the legislature. If there was minimal loss of instructional days, parents might they may think the pay cuts are no big deal, and the teachers don't mind the pay cuts, which is not what the union wanted at all. They wanted parents pissed off.
Anyway, I was struck by one sentence in the article:
"Some 22,000 people work for the Department of Education. About 13,000 are teachers."
Paraphrasing my old post, http://theseus51.xanga.com/704521343/item, we spend $14,000 per student, with an average class size is 15 students, costing $210,000 per classroom. Assuming the average teacher makes about $50,000, it would seem that someplace there must be some overhead.
| | |
| I haven't been doing much, so haven't been able to think of anything to update with. Also haven't read any articles that I thought were that interesting. But I'll just post a bunch of random stuff I guess.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113889251
A Bitter Rift Divides Atheists - There is a schism is Atheism. Those who want to engage with the religious, and those who want to mock and insult them. Basically the split would be between the liberal atheists, and the fundamentalist atheists.
---
I also watched Monty Python's "The Life of Brian" and I thought it was hilarious. Probably would have been funnier if I could understand everything that was being said, but their British accents made some words hard to understand, but I got the gist of it.
---
"Never hit a man when he's down? Bullshit. Show me a better time."
Page 112 of Staff Sgt. David Bellavia's "House to House"
I read "House to House", a soldier's account of the battle of Falluajah in Iraq. This was at the peak of President Bush's Global War on Common Sense, and it was a pretty intense book. They were fighting with everything from anti-tank bombs, to hand to hand combat with their bare fists and pocket knives. With death at every turn, the intensity of it all was nullified a bit because I knew the hero would live, for obvious reasons.
| | |
|
