What Am I?

[wolf]

Grav, lower the rate on #12 to 15% and you're in the running for being my soul-mate.

If you're a dude.

[skysidhe]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

What am I?

1. Guns are cool. Everyone should go shooting one at least once to see what it is.

2. Guns alone do not keep a people free, but they might help sometimes.

3. Education is the most important thing a culture can promote.

4. All major religions' descriptions of creation are wrong, and the Gods they describe are fictional superstitions grown out of an ignorant, young human race trying desperately to make sense of its puzzle without starting from the necessary clues. To sum up: if there is a God, He is not who they say He is.

5. Some cultures are more productive than others, and they should be admired and copied, as they extend and improve the lives of all.

6. If a law is bad, it is not immoral to break it. If a law is terrible, it may be one's duty to break it.

7. The free market has been one of the most remarkable ideas ever, leading to a maximization of human activity that has massively improved the world, and led more people out of poverty than any other system ever devised.

8. Where wealth is created, it is not a "zero-sum game" where in order for some have a larger slice of pie, it is necessary for others to have smaller slices. Wealth creation does that a little, but it also makes a bigger pie.

9. Global climate change is happening, but our notion of it as catastrophic is too alarmist, driven by mankind's built-in fear of death and disaster. Many things will actually benefit from it.

10. I am optimistic for the future, because I see humans solving most major problems and providing enough to sustain humanity with food, clothing and shelter; maybe not within my lifetime, but not too far thereafter.

11. If a city wants to encourage civic improvement, citizen involvement, a flourishing arts community, clean streets and safe neighborhoods, it must first do whatever it can to attract gay people to live there.

12. In the next 20 years, the US must reduce its military spending by half. In order to allow this to happen, in a world still full of dangerous people and ruinous ideas, EU must increase by half.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

I'm a thread killer.

You are a middle man and awash in thread drift.

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by SamIam

And Gravdigr is just a typical Kentuckian.

Hey!!!

[xoxoxoBruce]

Are you objecting to typical, or Kentuckian?

3. Education is the most important thing a culture can promote.

The fly in that ointment is promotion of education for education's sake. That's why after 16 years of school so many college graduates are living in Mom's basement with no job and crushing debt. What should be promoted is not education, but learning... learning productive, useful, skills rather than general, useless knowledge.

Bachelor of Arts, lovely... but can you fix your car, bake bread, create anything? Did you even learn critical thinking, or just how to pass courses? Oh yes, you can teach the next generation the same useless shit you were taught, just so they can say they went to college, got an "education".

Hopefully there will always be people like Dana, who picked a section of interest to her, and has worked very hard to increase her knowledge. In doing her research, she's dug into the dusty archives to discover and catalog history so it won't be lost, and more easily available for future scholars in that field. Will it be earth shaking... no. But important to collective human knowledge.

We need scholars, musicians, plumbers, and mechanics, as much as we need physicists and Doctors, but these are all learned skills, not just education.

[classicman]

Interesting timing xoB, I just heard on the radio that more parents are suggesting their children take up a trade rather than go to college. There was a whole story about it on NPR, I think.

[xoxoxoBruce]

My hero.


Mom, Dad, I want to be a school teacher.

But sweetie, hookers make so much more money.

[regular.joe]

Wow, great thread so far. I really liked the talk by Mike. My oldest boy is going to go to school in the fall, his choice is to go to a trade school. A two year school in auto mechanics.

Thank you all for paying your taxes as I am transferring my Army college benefits to him to accomplish this.

I don't think that this world and what we do is about making money. It's about making a living.

[infinite monkey]

Originally Posted by regular.joe

Wow, great thread so far. I really liked the talk by Mike. My oldest boy is going to go to school in the fall, his choice is to go to a trade school. A two year school in auto mechanics.

Thank you all for paying your taxes as I am transferring my Army college benefits to him to accomplish this.

I don't think that this world and what we do is about making money. It's about making a living.

Hi Joe!

I am always in awe of the VA benefits office here at the college. It's been a rough year for them, but so many wonderful people benefit...and deserve it for serving the country. The woman who is in charge is very proud that she is able to do what she does for our veterans. They are typically the nicest and most respectful students too.

My buddy got her bachelor's due to her reservist enlistment (and she's still in reserves) and her boyfriend is now going to school too (he's a Marine, veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan.)


Thanks for your service.

[glatt]

My daughter has little interest in making things or in the trades. She likes to read and wants to write. Although she's gifted in both math and science.

My son is absolutely nuts about making stuff. I've got a basement workshop and I've gone over proper use of hand tools with him and he's got free run of the place. No power tools yet unless I'm with him, and no stationary power tools yet at all.

He can decide what he wants to do when he's older, but I'm going to make sure he considers the trades.

Our middle school has an amazing band program. One of the best in the state. But if you choose to take advantage of the outstanding band program, you can't take the electives like industrial arts and home economics. They don't call them that, but those electives really look pretty good too. There's a robotics one, and wood shop, and metal shop, and cooking. You rotate between all of them, or you can do band.

I suppose if my son winds up taking band, he can still always putter in my shop at home.

For his birthday last month, one of the gifts we gave him was a bunch of random lumber.

[xoxoxoBruce]

For his birthday last month, one of the gifts we gave him was a bunch of random lumber.

So you're priming him to be on a board.

[Undertoad]

Mike Rowe's TED talk is awesome for those who haven't seen it. It's the one that starts with talking about lamb castration.

I should have made promoting trades education #4. I thought about it.

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by glatt

Our middle school has an amazing band program. One of the best in the state. But if you choose to take advantage of the outstanding band program, you can't take the electives like industrial arts and home economics. They don't call them that, but those electives really look pretty good too. There's a robotics one, and wood shop, and metal shop, and cooking. You rotate between all of them, or you can do band.

Our high school has an awesome band. The program starts with third graders. Including "band front" dancers, etc. it includes about a third of the student body, but it didn't interfere with my kids taking foods, metal shop, robotics, whatever.

[wolf]

I was a band geek.

In my high school being in Marching Band was separate from being in Concert Band, Wind Ensemble, and Jazz Band, although certainly there was a lot of crossover. Marching Band was considered an activity, all practices were after school, except of course, for band camp, which ran the last two weeks prior to school starting.

I was a band major, which just meant that i took band (and chorus) instead of home ec and shop and art