Texsox

QUOTE(LosMediasBlancas @ Nov 11, 2007 -> 12:45 AM) Oh you mean the 'wrapped up like a douche' song. I love misheard lyrics. The bathroom's on the right . . .

QUOTE(BearSox @ Nov 11, 2007 -> 08:16 AM) as sad as that is, humans are omnivores, and I believe in the food chain. Food production ain't pretty. I suspect that if we had to go out and kill our own game, our diets would look a whole lot more like Soxy's. I've often said that at some point everyone should have to go out and kill their meal and see if they want to continue to eat meat. Drive out to the ranch and lay the sights on a cow and pull the trigger. Grab a knife and git r done. Carve out that steak and slap it on a grill. If you can do that, then you can head to the butcher shop and buy your meat.

QUOTE(LowerCaseRepublican @ Nov 11, 2007 -> 08:04 AM) If they don't want their child reading it, then don't have them read it. Case closed. Accept the grades that one gets as a result. Complain to the teacher about the choice of the book. However, don't go on a crusade making every parents' decision for them by trying to ensure that nobody gets to read the book. Plus, most of the time that parents are "concerned" about something just means that it is a lot of undue stress and problems for the teacher which end up getting resolved with the teacher being correct. (from personal experience in the places where I've done my professional observations and my current job) And yes, I've actually had to read plenty of pieces in high school that I found less than palatable to my own opinions and taste (oddly, the same book that the other honors kid didn't think was appropriate) but I read the book because it is challenging to read. Overcome the simple "OMG THERE IS TEX SEXORS!!!!!1111!1! ELEVENTY!" and see why it is placed in there, the context of the situation, etc. Banning books in schools is absolutely insane, from any political agenda. And such a political hatchet job from you, Tex. I honestly expected more. Quit with the banning the book. Applying this definition would mean the teacher banned every book that wasn't selected. Implying that the kids can only read the books that a teacher has selected for them works both ways. Someone is making decisions on what is being read. If you want to call it selecting one and banning the others, then accept that teachers are banning millions of books, and these parents want to ban one. After all, the teacher said this is the only book they can read. Accepting your argument would mean that there is zero chance that a book would not be appropriate for High School kids and if there are, that no teacher would ever assign that material. We both know that there are materials not suitable for a High School classroom, and we both know that some teacher would want to "push the envelope" and "challenge" the kids. If the teacher doesn't want any oversight, start their own school. Public oversight in public schools. No other person employed in a public capacity has total authority, and I believe someone that is so influential with our nation's kids, should certainly be reviewed and some check and balance occur, I agree that there are easy solutions to this. If enough citizens, and administrators agree, redact the offensive materials. Assigning only certain chapters is done in College survey classes all the time.

http://www.meat.org/

Probably the best example of changing team names for ethical reasons was by Abe Pollin when he changed the Washington Bullets to the Wizards. He was returning from the funeral for assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Rabin and did not want to glorify gun violence. Funny this team has been called the Chicago Packers, Bullets, and Wizards. All have carried a negative interpretation to their name.

So of course LCR, parents could never be right? That the English teacher is omnipotent? Amazing how you support civil disobedience if it suits *your* political agenda. I'll bet if this was some right wing piece that the kids didn't want to read, you'd be coaching them, talking about rights and process. The President of the US has a check and balance, I think a high school English teacher should also.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 10, 2007 -> 04:38 PM) You lost me. You mean Romney's Mormonism today is seen in the same light as Kennedy's Catholocism in 1960? I don't think so. Even in the 60's, I doubt much of the population saw Catholics as a cult. If they did, Kennedy wouldn't have gotten the votes he did. It was a big campaign issue. We like our Presidents old, white, and Protestant. With Kennedy, the Pope was going to open a branch office in the West Wing. Many people, and not just the "wackos" believed that Kennedy would have a higher power, the Pope, than his responsibilities as President. That is push came to shove, he would take the interests of his Church over the interests of the Country. Remember, no Catholic had been elected President at that point. Here is the speech that many believe turned the tide and allowed him to get past this issue. This issue was strongest in the south and Kennedy meeting these Ministers on their turf was huge. http://www.quotedb.com/speeches/greater-ho...ial-association The man could speak. Some of this is probably frame of reference, but Catholicism is not viewed on equal footing by mainstream Christianity. Remember the Protestant religions are protesting something, and that something is Catholicism. There are theological differences, and the most fanatical will tell you that Catholics are going to hell for their beliefs. So graphically it's something like this Protestants ---------------> Catholics -----> Mormons Sometimes I'm not certain where to fit in Jews and sadly, why even bother with thinking about any other religious or non religious beliefs? One final note, let's remember that he barely won. He probably has much in common with Bush '00. Thank Chicago and the Dem Machine. IIRC he barely won Illinois, by around 5,000 votes but won Chicago by close to 500,000.

At your service

Too much time posting and not getting work done has me in an all weekend cram session. Plenty of friends stopping by to help

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 10, 2007 -> 04:16 PM) D'OH! slacker

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 10, 2007 -> 11:46 AM) Big, big, big difference in national perception of Catholics versus Mormons. Most poeple see Catholics as a branch of Christianity, though they may disagree with some of their stands. The majority of people view Mormons as a cult. Right or wrong, that's the perception. The two are just not comparable, when looking at it from the view of the nation. I tend to agree, but am wondering if Catholic + 45 years = Mormom??

FlaSoxxJim could better answer this, but IIRC that Ray *lives* on or near the bottom. That's Karma

I predict that less than one in five Americans will choose the nominees. McCain v. Obama

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 10, 2007 -> 12:13 PM) Ham soda anyone? Hey Admin, ever check out all the threads

I just had one of those stopped dead in my tracks musical moments. Where a song all of a sudden just slaps you across the face and says listen, this is important. Funny, I've probably heard the song a thousand times before, but this arrangement maybe a dozen or less. Anyway, had my headphones on, doing some homework, feeling the blues slightly. Plowing away on a tedious assignment. Then I heard Long and Winding Road (from Let it Be Naked) for the first time as a Christian song. (Jim, don't cry) Wow.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Nov 10, 2007 -> 10:38 AM) I don't think Romney can win the election. The bible belt of the south, which has been a Republican stronghold, won't for a LDS candidate. Without the south, he can't win. Yep. One of my favorite kids, an Eagle Scout from my Troop and a summer camp staffer just left on his two year LDS Mission. He's going to be in the New York / Connecticut area. I just realized all those kids knocking on doors are almost like campaign workers. My only thought to the contrary is we elected a Catholic 45 years ago, so maybe a member of the LDS Church really isn't an insurmountable hurdle. But I'm guessing YASNY is spot on.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Nov 10, 2007 -> 10:06 AM) Referencing your elephant in the room. I still think that people who pay the freight, ie the taxpayers, should have some say on what is actually loaded on to the truck. Well said.

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Nov 10, 2007 -> 09:59 AM) I essentially side with Rex here, but more than anything it is that public input needs to go through the proper channels which is whet you're saying as well. The thing is, the notion that the public school teachers - even in AP classes – are lone wolf rebels assigning the most extreme material they can is a fallacy, and a lot of the perceived controversy stems from there. Counties and school boards have approved text and book lists, and teachers have to jump through major hoops to stray from those lists. As mush as you want to support the public right to input, you also have to have some faith in the system that is already in place. And you do, of course. Within a few degrees we all agree that lone parents with no broad support should not hold much sway no matter how bent out of shape they are about course programming. Likewise, you have to have some faith that the system has hired competent AP instructors who are better equipped to select level-appropriate, context-appropriate, and content-appropriate reading for their classes than the average parent. I'll finish by introducing everybody to the elephant in the room. Embarking on a crusade to protect your public school child from a couple of pages of dark, unglamorized human brutality within a literary work is screaming into the wind when you consider the reality of what is discussed on the bus, in the halls, lunchroom, and scholyard at every public high school in the country every day. If a parent has made the decision to toss their kids into a system that would rate an NC-17 for the everyday language and themes discussed, I think efforts to ban a book because a few pages of it descend to that level are misguided and unproductive. I agree with 99% of what you write. I still object to saying "banning". If someone decided to teach this same class by using Jugghead and Archie comic books, we may question if it is the most suitable work to use. If the class is in classic literature and a teacher decides to use the latest Clive Custer novel, again the public should have a process to question. It is not banning the book, it is questioning which is an appropriate work to study. It could be said that by picking "Prince of Tides" the teacher "banned" tens of thousands of books. My greatest concern about using this work is the easy availability of the movie. Anyone can drop down to Blockbuster, watch the movie, and probably pass any test the teacher may assign. In this case, the book did remain fairly true to the novel. Screaming into the wind? I think parents have an obligation to talk with there kids and explain that just because some kids may do something, does not mean it is the smart thing, the safe thing, etc. By telling your kids, go ahead, have sex at 14, there is nothing we can do, besides everyone does it, here are your condoms, sends one message. Telling your kids that yes some kids do this, but here are some reasons why you should wait, and these are the values in our house, sends another. They may have to live in that world, but they do not have to descend to the lowest common denominator. As a parent if you are with your kids and see a homeless person passed out in a doorway you have a few options. You can pretend not to see him. Which sadly is what most parents do. You can tell your kids how much you pray that they don't end up that way, discuss why school, staying away from drugs, respecting themselves, etc. will help avoid that. You might also discuss ways your family can help the homeless. Discuss the causes of homelessness. Or you can say cool, let's look at the bum. See, he wet his pants, I'll bet he crapped his pants as well. Maybe we can get him to appear in bum fights. Hey, ask him to tell us how you got sodomized. Sometimes I think we rush to the third choice in our schools. Am I advocating banning discussions about homelessness because I don't want to discuss how he was sodomized? Perhaps there are other more fruitful areas to discuss first. Would you consider making that portion of the material alternate reading only, without any potential testing? I would prefer not to redact it, but I could really see a solution to make certain chapters required, the same as they do in many survey course in college.

They will sell a 4-pack to me.

QUOTE(knightni @ Nov 10, 2007 -> 02:01 AM) I had to do that. We had a giant oak paneled TV with huge channel dials you changed by hand. We sat so close as kids (to change the channel) that my folks worried about our eyesight. We also only had 5 TV stations, from 1976 to 1983, til we got a cable box. Then, we had reach on top of the TV to find cable stations to click. Needless to say, I grew up on PBS.

Happy Birthday!!

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Nov 9, 2007 -> 05:11 PM) Never fear, Balta. HillaryCare will take care of us all. I get what you're saying... and it's not pretty, but I will NEVER get the "entitlement" arguement, which is of course veiled in your comment. It is all a matter of degrees. Should humans allow poor, uninsured people to bleed to death at the steps of an ER? I doubt anyone here would say yes. In the US we have the resources to bring that person into the ER and patch them up. Now start taking that step by step. Do we have the resources to offer immunization? Perhaps can we remove an appendix? Can we fix a broken leg? You call it entitlement, I call it being human. Animals will turn and walk away, unable to help. I assume you have insurance at your company. Your rate is determined by everyone in your pool, not just you. Anyone in your company is "entitled" to join. Your company has probably joined with other companies in a larger pool. Again, your employees feel "entitled" to this coverage. As the pools get bigger and bigger, you have more and more "entitled" members. Now take that concept to a pool that includes around 301,139,947 members and you have the entitlement that you will never understand. I believe health care for all Americans is a worthy goal. It will work if we maintain all the important stuff we have now, like choice, and perhaps get rid of some of the unwanted stuff like, runaway costs.

Like the USSR we will fail not from the sword, but from the mountain of debt we demand our country takes on.

I believe the information would be unreliable and potentially hurt, rather than help, saving my loved one. So yes, I would understand. If we are going to later prosecute them under our laws, then we have to accept all the laws. Anything else makes a mockery of our way of life. To say this only works in some cases, is kind of hypocritical. If you believe in America and our legal system, then I don't see any other way. I draw the line at harming children. No. And I do not see where they are mutually exclusive. Our laws do not allow for the assassination of individuals.

QUOTE(Rex Kicka** @ Nov 9, 2007 -> 05:39 PM) Isn't Dorian Gray all about being gay in the 1800's? Not exactly, but there are homosexual overtones in a couple of scenes. The author, Oscar Wilde, was convicted and spent time in jail for what he presumably did in the privacy of his own home. There were any number of authors that were screwed over for being gay during that time. Ezra Pound comes to mind. The book is easily in my top ten list, perhaps top three of all time. And that is kind of my point. Take that to one or the other extreme and I think the teacher should be reigned in.