farms, money, education... slow news day

Two odd things I have noted in the news.... one is that Martha stewart is very young looking for the 63 years she has been on this earth..... I am very impressed with her health habits(or her plastic surgeon). TWo is that for some unknown reason every single picture of lebanese protesters in the news in the past ten days has focused on a large breasted good looking young woman. I wonder if the whole country looks like that.......

I do not subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, I have too much to read as is. It is, however, an excellent publication well worth the read if you have the time. I look at their front page every day, just to get an idea of what they are barking about currently. Today they say that analysts expect oil prices to spike above $60 a barrel. I have a cousin who trades oil commodities..... I hope he can take advantage of this cause the rest of us are gonna be hit in the wallet by it. Now if only America had its own oil producing land.... if only america had put more effort into the electric car back when cars were starting, if only americans did not love their SUVs so much, if... if... if... but reality is reality and we must deal..... time to re-budget.

There is an interesting documentary out there somewhere called 'Gunners Palace' that i am looking forward to seeing one day.

Yesterday I was lamenting to my friends that status of education in our subset of the american population. It seems that my subset is not the only one seeing problems. America has terrible schooling systems, and we give little or no respect to the position of teaching. My mother is a special education teacher, she has two masters degrees. One in general special ed and one specifically in teaching the deaf and blind (though how they lumped those two together is beyond me). She recently stopped working in the high-school age group because she was tired after 20 years of the same age group, the same problems; and school administrators making no progress in fixing anything. She decided maybe she would like to work again with little children. That decision did not last long. She looked for jobs but no one would hire her. The teachers union had, many years ago worked out a deal where a teacher that is hired must be paid commensurate with their experience.... so my mothers twenty years of experience made her too expensive. Instead the schools hire young kids, fresh from undergrad, with little or no experience and often without a teaching license as long as they promise to get it in the first year. While the union had meant well with that deal, it backfired. But the problem is not that deal, its deeper. The problem is that the best and brightest look down on being a teacher. Teachers get paid crap (NYC starting salary is 25k, you can make more waiting tables at an upscale restaurant, or as a secretary, or doing data entry. Hell people make more than that selling stuff on ebay full time!) teachers get no support (My sister is also a special ed teacher, and while working in NY for a school run by the catholic church under contract to the city she had to by her own classroom supplies because they refused to provide them, saying they were not needed and there was no extra money in the budget). Teachers are the bottom of the barrel. An attempt was made to get better teachers, the government declared that a teacher must have a bachelors in the subject they are teaching. That was pointless. No one is paying them to go to school for two degrees (education plus whatever they choose to teach). Better to give good money to teachers, and then require that they meet higher standards. Offer 50k as starting but the person must have a special ed masters plus a bachelors in whatever they choose to teach. Make it only for teachers going forward. That way you don't screw the little towns with one teacher teaching ten subjects who has only a degree in english. He/she can keep teaching, but the next person will be a federal employee under special contract, paid commensurate with their skills/experience/schooling, answerable to a higher set of standards. All of that costs money and money is something this government just does not have. which is why we spend $80 billion on war but next to nothing on education, cause we don't have money. I think I will start writing my uninformed opinion into a single tirade on how to fix this country.... heres a sneak preview.... DON'T PUT AN IDIOT IN CHARGE! DON'T PANDER TO LARGE CORPORATIONS! DON'T TAKE THE EASY ROAD!
ah well.....

A quick sub-foot-note on american intelligence. I personally believe that the amount of time we spend in front of the TV is inversely correlated with how well we do in life. The more time in front of the TV, the less well you will do. WOrse I think that if anyone were to check, they would find the same correlation between tv time and intelligence. (I do not think tv is bad or evil, just that like any drug it must be taken in small doses and carefully budgeted.) So it is with great sadness that the last bastion of reading time (not the bathroom, tvs in the bathroom are old news) is now being invaded by the TV

lets talk about the US budget and how we have no money....

Our country has major money problems right? So lets figure out how to fix them starting with what we spend..... well Greenspan already warned about deficit spending. We should probably listen to the man, he has been shepherding us through economic boom and bust for decades. Now he is talking about how we collect the governments money. Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, cautiously endorsed a shift in the nation's tax system on Thursday from one that primarily taxes what people earn to one that taxes what they spend. And here is another article (shorter) on the same subject Greenspan Calls for Simpler Tax Code. I once hung out with a guy in college who had spent a summer working for an economist. That economist talked non stop about taxing what we buy on the federal level, putting a 'small' income tax on the hugely wealthy, and otherwise leaving everyone alone. He was convinced this was the way to run things. They spent that summer writing a book on it. In the end the book was never published, some major flaw in the math behind it all was found (it came out when they applied game theory, then a new thing to do in economics). I wonder if Greenspan's idea is the same or not.

On the subject of US money well spent, or rather not so well spent, we have farm subsidies. What's that you say, how dare I take aim at the american farmer, that poor fellow who feeds us daily and can barely make ends meet?!?!?! well in truth i am not taking aim at him. I am in fact taking aim at the giant farming conglomerates that are the true beneficiaries of the farm subsidies. Many farm subsidies pay according to how much land you farm or don't farm. There is no land cap and no statement that says you must be an individual farmer and not a corporation. So the giant farm corporations get millions in subsidies that they really should not be getting, that money allows them to undercut the small farmers in price and operating costs, causing the small farmer for whom those subsidies were designed, to lose his land and end up on TV asking for MORE SUBSIDIES. (gee, you think some education might be needed here?) Anyway, the world trade organization has rules once again that US subsidies to cotton farmers are illegal. Now I wonder if anyone has figured out that they are also bad for US business.... (its that whole protectionism thing again.... don't protect your people, teach them how to compete!)

Like I said before, one of these days I will have to explain the whole corn/sugar/beef problem with american food/farming industry and why it is bankrupting and harming america.

Its a slow news day out there in the science and tech world.....

I have an article to report:on teens and sex which goes hand in hand with what i mentioned yesterday on abstinence programs and what not.

I have news on the automotive front: The rules are changing for formula 1 racing which at first I thought was a silly thing to do but the more I think of it the better it is. It will inspire new advances in automotive technology like more durable better handling tires and longer lasting engine parts. Now if I were a formula 1 car owner I would run out NOW and buy every possible piece for my car's engine made from glassy metals. Hell if I had money to invest in a new formula 1 car I would run out and have its engine parts made form glassy metal. That stuff does not corrode, does not wear out quickly, has very little friction and absorbs very little kinetic energy.... its perfect. Actually if I were a major high end car manufacturer like .... say.... Ferrari... i would create a car that used that material everywhere I could just to see how massively improved I could make it. Same as a production car, just new material. hmmm.... where else would strong, corrosion resistant smooth metals be of use.... maybe in building a reusable launch vehicle for low costs satellite launches.... i mean being able to reuse a part hundreds of times instead of tens... thats gatta be useful.... oh well, another idea lays by the road side.

and just to show you how slow a news day today is, the NYTimes is running an article about how hard it is for transsexuals to use public bathrooms without getting harassed.

ah well.... heres hoping something really interesting pops up soon.