[xico]

Up to 16 US soldiers committed suicide last month

15 Nov 2009 More U.S. soldiers likely committed suicide last month than were killed in the Fort Hood shootings earlier this month. The U.S. army is investigating sixteen potential suicides among active-duty soldiers in October, about twice the number reported in September, Army officials said. Of the 7 reported in September, three have been confirmed as suicides, and 4 still are under investigation [!] to determine the cause of death.

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=565776

This is an ill omen if there ever was one.

[iltos]

Originally Posted by xico

What I found disconcerting about my own education--until I grew up, after my stint in the army--was that the why of things was never explained. I found math boring until I was selling a piece of land and discovered the surveyors were using trig for their calculations. I hated trig with a passion . . . then. but reading Rudy Rucker's Infinity and the Mind or Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension or Mind Tools is a real pleasure. The same is true with Latin and Caesar's friggin Gallic Wars. It was only much later that I discovered Ovid and his Metamorphosis. I knew a young woman who had 4 years of college Spanish and couldn't speak it, but went to Greece and was speaking fluent Greek in 6 months.

agreed, on both counts....the sad truth is that it IS experience which is the best teacher.
i HATED language in high school, and geometry was a close second....both of them seem so far away from anything i cared about (or understood)....

a part of it may have been the teachers inability to do more than just throw out the material, with the expectation that "since it's there, i would come" (nothing in the way of challenge....just expectation that i would learn because i had to

guess what....i DIDN'T have too

but when i did -for the peace corp, and for carpentry, both subjects became really interesting....no less of a challenge in the beginning, but one i was willing to accept.

motivation....i see it in little kids all the time: they love to explore and to learn....sadly our education system takes that motivation and twists it into obligation for some, or boredom or resistance.

But it almost seems to me as if the conservative mind set doesn't really want to deal with thinking people, especially thinking people who ask questions that upset the apple cart.

welpers, it is one of the hallmarks of conservatism to resist change. but to characterize this as a "conservative" problem, xico, is miss the point of the political divide we currently face.
and that is, imo, that liberals and conservatives alike are seeing each other as agents of their own, self absorbed, status quo....neither side is willing to risk seeing what the other is looking at.

and both sides agree, sadly, that it's because our kids are not "edumacated" enough....looks to me like most of us are gonna have to get a lot more stupid before we will wise up.

[Bastiat]

Originally Posted by iltos

welpers, it is one of the hallmarks of conservatism to resist change.

Wrong. You are as brainwashed as xico; which is very unusual you for you.

[iltos]

Originally Posted by Bastiat

Wrong. You are as brainwashed as xico; which is very unusual you for you.

hmmm, gb....i'm thinking that you missed the forest for the trees.
nevertheless, your point is well taken
sometimes, generalities serve a purpose, tho.

[Bastiat]

Originally Posted by iltos

hmmm, gb....i'm thinking that you missed the forest for the trees.
nevertheless, your point is well taken
sometimes, generalities serve a purpose, tho.

What generality?...you stated that a "hallmark" of conservatism is to "resist change". There is nothing general in that statement and that statement (general or not) is flat out wrong. No conservative political philosophy espouses "resistance" to "change".

[ekim68]

What is the conservative political philosophy?

[iltos]

Originally Posted by Bastiat

What generality?...you stated that a "hallmark" of conservatism is to "resist change". There is nothing general in that statement and that statement (general or not) is flat out wrong. No conservative political philosophy espouses "resistance" to "change".

are you happier with the statement that conservatives tend to be traditionalists? that they tend to believe that the traditional values of patriotism, christainity, captialism, and military strength are what has made america the country that it is, and that these values must be protected in a changing world to insure the continuation of the america they believe in?

“There is an order which holds all things in their places: ...it is made for us, and we are made for it. The thinking conservative, far from denying the existence of this eternal
order, endeavors to ascertain its nature and to conform to that order, which is the
source of the Permanent Things.”
—Russell Kirk, 1989

it's an old quote, and it's author has been discredited by many conservatives since it was written...but you listen to conservatives here and else where, gb....and -while they are certainly not the "policy makers" of the conservative movement- those four things are what resonate with them, and for just the reasons that Kirk believed.....tradition.

but none of this -or all of it, depending on your pov- has much bearing on my conversation with xico....the thrust of which is that, regardless of how he, or i, you or anyone else percieve the differences between liberal and conservative philosophies, neither one them is willing to address the failings in APPROACH to education, which is currently focused on the lines that mark the measuring cup, rather than the volume within it: slices of performance, cut from the meat of portfolio.

and no, i don't have a master plan handy to change the system...doesn't mean i can't rail against it, tho

[ekim68]

Remember the conservatives didn't want to break away from British colonialism, eh?

[xico]

Originally Posted by iltos

are you happier with the statement that conservatives tend to be traditionalists? that they tend to believe that the traditional values of patriotism, christainity, captialism, and military strength are what has made america the country that it is, and that these values must be protected in a changing world to insure the continuation of the america they believe in?


it's an old quote, and it's author has been discredited by many conservatives since it was written...but you listen to conservatives here and else where, gb....and -while they are certainly not the "policy makers" of the conservative movement- those four things are what resonate with them, and for just the reasons that Kirk believed.....tradition.

but none of this -or all of it, depending on your pov- has much bearing on my conversation with xico....the thrust of which is that, regardless of how he, or i, you or anyone else percieve the differences between liberal and conservative philosophies, neither one them is willing to address the failings in APPROACH to education, which is currently focused on the lines that mark the measuring cup, rather than the volume within it: slices of performance, cut from the meat of portfolio.
and no, i don't have a master plan handy to change the system...doesn't mean i can't rail against it, tho

Nice thoughtful post, Iltos. I have to agree with you there.

[xico]

Originally Posted by ekim68

Remember the conservatives didn't want to break away from British colonialism, eh?

[xico]

Welcome Home, War! Creating the "Domestic Surveillance State"
How America's Wars Are Systematically Destroying Our Liberties


By Prof. Alfred W. McCoy

URL of this article: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...t=va&aid=16123

Global Research, November 16, 2009
Tom Dispatch - 2009-11-12


In his approach to National Security Agency surveillance, as well as CIA renditions, drone assassinations, and military detention, President Obama has to a surprising extent embraced the expanded executive powers championed by his conservative predecessor, George W. Bush. This bipartisan affirmation of the imperial executive could "reverberate for generations," warns Jack Balkin, a specialist on First Amendment freedoms at Yale Law School. And consider these but some of the early fruits from the hybrid seeds that the Global War on Terror has planted on American soil. Yet surprisingly few Americans seem aware of the toll that this already endless war has taken on our civil liberties.


Don't be too surprised, then, when, in the midst of some future crisis, advanced surveillance methods and other techniques developed in our recent counterinsurgency wars migrate from Baghdad, Falluja, and Kandahar to your hometown or urban neighborhood. And don't ever claim that nobody told you this could happen -- at least not if you care to read on.


Think of our counterinsurgency wars abroad as so many living laboratories for the undermining of a democratic society at home, a process historians of such American wars can tell you has been going on for a long, long time. Counterintelligence innovations like centralized data, covert penetration, and disinformation developed during the Army's first protracted pacification campaignin a foreign land -- the Philippines from 1898 to 1913 -- were repatriated to the United States during World War I, becoming the blueprint for an invasive internal security apparatus that persisted for the next half century.


More here.

Of course that's what's going to happen.

[ekim68]

The Drug Industry Cashes In

The drug industry has been ramping up its prices in advance of any health care reforms that might clamp down on its profits.

Now come the price increases. As Duff Wilson reported in The Times on Monday, the industry has raised the wholesale prices of prescription drugs by about 9 percent in the past year. That appears to be the highest annual increase since 1992.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/18/op...wed3.html?_r=3

[ekim68]

How about that private healthcare, eh?

For 12-Year-Old Without an Arm, Insurance Has Run Out

Benjamin French was born with his right arm missing below the elbow. In his 12 years, he has been fitted with seven prostheses. His most recent replacement will cost nearly $30,000 and his doctor says he will soon grow out of it.

But, according to his insurance company, the boy is ineligible for further coverage of prosthetic devices because he has already spent his lifetime maximum benefit.

Benjamin’s family happens to live in Michigan, one of 33 states where insurance companies are allowed to set annual and lifetime caps on prosthetic coverage. The family’s policy with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan covers a maximum of $30,000 per lifetime for prosthetics, plus $1,000 per year for repairs. In states such as Colorado and Maryland, the law says there can be no such cap on prosthetics.

More

[ekim68]

Rising obesity will cost U.S. health care $344 billion a year

If Americans continue to pack on pounds, obesity will cost the USA about $344 billion in medical-related expenses by 2018, eating up about 21% of health-care spending, says the first analysis to estimate the future medical costs of excess weight.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/...ty-costs_N.htm

[xico]

Jacques Attali | Thieves We Like
Jacques Attali, L'Express: "Two extraordinary heists made the headlines this week: A security guard in Lyon absconded with 11 million euros after ten years of good and faithful service; and a postal worker calmly departed with a million euros. Heists without any violence, both pulled off by people of modest circumstances, apparently without any fuss, acting openly, having perfectly prepared their moves, evaporating immediately after them into the woodwork. Robberies where, in fact, no one was robbed except the banking institution."
More here.

Kind of what Goldman Sachs pulled.