Pangloss

"The winky face is keeping an eye out", lol. Good one. He almost got me, too!

Mission accomplished!

If memory serves Terri Schiavo's mother used to say the same thing. Oh, so there is a way to blame it on conservatives, eh? Whew. I thought the world had turned upside down!

If you want to split that hair that's fair enough, but I don't think it's at all clear what the Supreme Court would say. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged That's total soccer-mom, parents-who-scream-at-umpires mentality, IMO -- utterly ripping the ground right out from under anybody who ever dares to take care of a parent's child. Her "life dreams from age 5" are IRRELEVANT to the subject of whether she's being treated appropriately by those responsible for her upbringing. And I'm an adult, not a high school student, so that comparison is invalid on the basis that, as I say above, what's at issue here is treatment, not fairness. If I challenge a speeding ticket there is no higher issue of upbringing and responsibility -- I'm just challenging a ticket, nothing more. For adults to give this child a masqueraded "right" for ideological reasons isn't just a wrong on society, it's also bad for the child. It's reactionary reasoning like the above that make it absolutely impossible for services to be provided to parents. Impossible.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/06/italy.euthanasia.berlusconi/ Eluana Englaro has been in a vegetative state with irreversible brain damage for 17 years after a car accident. The parallels with the Schiavo case are legion -- family split over whether to end her life, a prior statement from the victim asking not to have this done, and the government intervening on moral grounds. Gee. I guess it wasn't just a Bush thing. How 'bout that? What a moron. Somebody wanna feed this guy a decent science adviser? I guess my feelings on this are obvious -- what do you all think?

That's the thing about the Web, it can be viewed either way. What was the purpose of her public rant? Was it intended to provoke opinions amongst her classmates? Does it matter what it was intended to do, or does it only matter what effect it actually had (e.g. only 3 visitors)? These are questions that lawmakers and courts have not yet decided. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I wondered about that as well. She wasn't even suspended, she was only stopped from running for class president, for pete's sake. Not exactly a big deal. We seem to be doing that a lot these days, teaching kids that it doesn't matter what's right or wrong, it only matters what Oprah can convince people of on television. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedLemme run a little example by you guys of something that happened to me when I was in high school, and let's see if we can apply this example in a hypothetical way to today's environment. I was in something called "Academic Bowl", which was a kind of quiz-show-like game that schools would put up teams to compete in. It was like a debate team, in a sense -- we had a squad of students and two faculty members to "captain" us, and we'd go around the state entering competitions. We were a small school and lost a lot, but it was great fun. In my senior year we went to state finals, in a little town in central Georgia known mostly as the place where the infamous Andersonville Civil War prison was at. It's a very quiet town with literally nothing to do aside from touring that landmark, so after that tour we went back to the hotel and settled down for the night. Well there were students from other schools staying there as well, and some of them gathered around the pool. But there wasn't really anything interesting going on, so most of us just went to bed early. But we didn't notice that one of our freshman students had disappeared. He showed up later a little drunk, after having gone to get beer with older students from another school. We didn't know anything about it. I did *literally nothing*, but I was suspended from school for a week and had to write a long essay about responsibility. All of the students got the same punishment and the team was disbanded. I don't recall what happened to the freshman kid who got drunk. (This was almost 30 years ago!) Nobody had ever told us to watch out for this kid. We had two adult minders who had been up in their hotel room during this pool gathering. Nothing at all happened at the pool, no drugs, no alcohol, nothing (that we saw anyway -- apparently the booze was out in the parking lot). We did literally nothing, and yet we were suspended and had permanent marks put on our records. So really what I think happened is that the adults were doing a bit of CYA. They didn't want to admit that they had lost control of the situation, and parents were complaining, so they needed some place to put the blame. After all, their jobs were on the line, but these kids were just... kids. Who cares? Looking back on it now it doesn't really bother me. But at the time I thought it was a huge outrage, and I can only imagine what I would have done if I'd known that I could bust out a web site, or call Dr. Phil and get these adults in trouble. And maybe that's a little bit of good, in the sense that accountability would have been put back into the picture. But at what cost? Isn't the real solution NOT depending on attention-seeking methods to add accountability to schools? Do we really want Oprah policing our schools? Surely we can do better than that. What I'm suggesting here is that even when the school does something to a kid that's completely wrong, that doesn't necessarily mean that a huge drama needs to erupt and a massive correction needs to take place. I'm not saying we should excuse serious crimes like rape or abuse, but in cases where the adult mistakenly disciplines a child, or some minor penalty like this doesn't seem to fit whatever minor crime has taken place, there is a huge drawback to the general public getting involved. We end up asking all sorts of questions that just are not warranted by the events, nor are we qualified to answer them from this distance. It's like using a bazooka to swat a fly -- you miss the fly and cause a lot of collateral damage, right? Had I done something about the above, I could have ended two careers. Is that really better than what happened? Really? Aside from that one negative experience, I have POSITIVE memories of both of those adults. They were incredibly beneficial to my early learning -- I wouldn't have gone to college without their tutelage. And I know they did the same for hundreds if not thousands of other students. Is this one mistake in judgment really enough to destroy all that? I don't think so. But I sure did at the time! This is the kind of thing I'm talking about when I say kids aren't able to make these calls. And we feed them right into the fire of Oprah and Dr. Phil. Are we insane?

Cute.

It's worth noting that much of what we're talking about here isn't a matter of having government do it, but rather having government pay for it. So the reasonable concern that government isn't very good at building or developing things (by committee, with ideologies and special interests getting in the way) is averted. That's not always the case, but it is when we're talking about infrastructure development, whether it's physical highways or virtual ones. So in a sense we're using the government to do the thing it's best at (collecting spending our money) and using business to do the thing it's best at (efficiently applying money to affect change of some kind). This is distinct from, for example, a public works program like those fostered under the New Deal's Works Progress Administration, which was considered a laughable joke even then for its inefficiency and the laziness of its workers. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged The problem I have with the above is that it's backward-looking instead of forward-looking. Hindsight is 20/20, and in the end it doesn't really matter why we're here, so long as we learn something from it. Laissez-faire would have us never learn anything; in fact insists that forward progress is a bad idea (see quote above). Even worse, it actually seems to thrive on the zero-sum aspects of economics. The new mixed model has proven that economics doesn't have to be a zero sum game, but they would have us return to a gold standard (denying the multiplicative value of money) and actually sees it as desirable that most workers remain ignorant and exploitable. The current society that we live in could never have been achieved under that reasoning. It just could not have. I acknowledge the deficiencies of such an approach -- we have to do better about deficit spending and debt. But those are surmountable problems, not ideology-breakers. Simply put, a mixed economic model works. And because it works, clearly a pure economic model (like socialism or capitalism) is simply no longer an option for the modern world. Don't get me wrong, we need those inputs -- they remind us of what the pitfalls are. But we can never actually use their most extreme, ideological advice. We need to keep them as museum pieces, carefully ensconced behind clear plastic windows with little openings so the sound can get through (but a little tinny and distorted).

Yeah I heard that earlier today, and was really impressed not only by the pilot's calm but by the professionalism and rapid action of the controllers. Especially with the Teterboro guy, who accepted without hesitation something that likely represented hours of tedious, time-consuming work to get back on schedule. Pilots will tell you that the controllers in that part of the country are the best in the world. I guess that's a good example of that.

Yes, she's doing a good job of learning the lesson of "How To Get What You Want No Matter The Cost To Society". She's also making great strides in the lesson of "Get Your Face On Every Television Program", which as we all know is required when defending your Constitutional rights (Article 12, wasn't it?). I believe there's even a picture of her and her mom, grim and determined in the face of The Powers That Be. She'll make an exemplary addition to our society. I wonder if Oprah has called yet.

It was off school property, so it meets padren's criteria above. And classes (like the one this girl was criticizing) are also official school events. There are many aspects to this case, I agree. But my main point is just that kids simply do not enjoy the constitutional rights that people seem to assume they do. It's worth noting that the law being proposed in the article is not the same thing as the constitution. If the constitution guaranteed these rights, then there would be no need for such a law. So the law itself would be a recognition that the basis doesn't exist in the first place. I'm surprised that the girl supports it, since it undermines her case before the Supreme Court. But that just goes to show you that children don't always understand the full measure of their actions, which of course is why they do not enjoy the full measure of constitutional rights in the first place.

You may consider discipline for actions taken off school grounds an abuse of power, but the Supreme Court disagrees with you, ruling in Morse v. Frederick (per the article ParanoiA linked in the OP) that schools can discipline students for something that happens off school grounds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_v._Frederick It's important to remember that the reason minors aren't provided the full measure of constitutional rights is because they're not capable of understanding the responsibilities that come with citizenship. Nobody is born with that understanding. It has to be learned. Those constitutional rights that they do enjoy revolve primarily around protecting them from others, not around allowing them to exercise freedoms they don't yet understand the power of.

PBS is re-running the Nova episode on Intelligent Design next week, so I just thought I'd mention it here. Exact timing for American viewers depends on local listings. The entire two-hour episode is available for viewing online anyway, but if you'd like me and prefer watching on TV, you can check it out. We talked about it here at SFN before, if memory serves, and I think the general consensus was that it was one of the best programs on the ID debate and the Dover trial specifically. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/program.html

You'd do it, too! <calls ecoli and cancels SFNPolCon 2009>

Okay. But there are very few absolutes when it comes to minors and the Constitution. Freedom of speech is not one of them, even for adults.

In what way?

Laws trump contracts. I'm not sure what's so hard to understand about that.

Dammit iNow, did you leave the Politics forum window open again?? <swat swat> Next I suppose you'll be opening jars of mosquitoes in here!

Well that's wrong, IMO. Not for moralistic reasons, but for capitalistic ones. You don't motivate the best work out of someone by guaranteeing a gold mine of compensation. You just do not. I don't care if it's Donald Freaking Trump. Who, by the way, came out in favor of bailout salary caps yesterday. (I know you agree, I'm just giving a reaction to what I'm sure will be touted as an objection by many observers.) Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Probably somewhere in the vicinity of the place where the EPA's regulatory powers are enumerated. Hint, hint. You seem to be consistently avoiding the fact that this is not a restriction being placed on all companies. It's a restriction being placed on companies that enter into a bailout agreement with the government. Government contracts always carry stipulations. Always.

And this morning a new proposal from two former members of the "Gang of 14" (the article doesn't mention that but I remembered the names) proposed stripping up to $200 billion from the bill in a last-ditch attempt to bring sanity back into the discussion and remove some of the less stimulus-oriented pieces. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/us/politics/06stimulus.html?hp Unfortunately some of the pieces they're proposing removing involve science: But I believe this is the correct decision. This bill needs to be what it purports to be, not a haven for special interests and projects and ideological shifts, no matter how beneficial. The NSF will receive new funding from this administration. Just not this way.

Well that's an interesting point. They say they're an ally, and they do go out and attempt to do various anti-terrorism activities, many of which promptly fail for various reasons. If we stop calling them an ally, do you think that will help them to fight terrorists better, or make it harder? And what sort of signal do you think it will send to the other faction groups currently vying for power in Pakistan? This is exactly the sort of dilemma that the White House has to deal with, and it all falls under the heading of "real politik". Sometimes you have to do things that you don't particularly like. (And this is another one of those areas where partisanship back home really hurts, btw. Obama is about to have to employ quite a large number of foreign policy moves that were also employed, under much criticism from the left, by the Bush 43 administration. Now they'll be criticized by conservatives instead.)

Humor posts copied to the Political Humor thread over on the Politics board: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=37962 Thanks!

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I think the question at this point is what to do about it. It's a bit of a three ring circus over there, and there is no clear path to success.

The bill seems to be coming apart at the seams, btw, with prominent Democrats in the Senate expressing their own annoyance with all the pork today. The President unfortunately told ABC's Charlie Gibson yesterday that the House bill contained "no earmarks", which is technically true but beside the point, and then went on to agree that there were bad things in there, which no doubt confused many viewers. The situation is a bit of a mess at the moment. But I think rightfully so, because it's a bad bill even in the Senate version, and this is NOT the fault of Republicans. It needs to be done right, without partisanship or ideology. NOW this is turning into a good first test of the Obama Administration.