Alfie has discovered the little lizards that abound in Florida. Alfe is also hunting them. He’s definitely getting his dog on. It’s good to see him enjoying dog type activities. It also indicates where he is developmentally as a “rescue” dog. It’s like baby’s first steps. We have had him for around five months now.
Privatization’s dirty little secret is that it cuts out the end consumer. For example our city privatized it’s waterworks. Any complaints? Too bad. As long as the city manager is happy with his perceived savings, the public be damned.
After all, the provider gets his money from the city; he owes the citizens nothing.
Turn the electric utility over to the electric company, guess what? You get charged to pay your bill by credit card.
When your politicians talk about “privatization” providing savings, ask them where the consumer’s voice is. The voters do not elect the board of directors of a company. Therefore, they have no voice.
In most, if not all, of the states in the United States education is mandatory for all children of a certain age. Generally, students between the ages of six and eighteen must be receiving education whether public, private or in the home.
They proceed year by year through the system grouped by age and having completed the previous year’s work in English, math, science and social studies. Because of the “promotion by age” process, the academic strengths and weaknesses of individuals cannot be addressed efficiently or at all. No matter how quickly a student masters the subject matter, they must complete twelve years of schooling, Ergo, twelve years with no time off for good behavior or for that matter chance of parole. No matter how hard you work in school, no matter how many extra courses you take, the bottom line for the ninety-nine percent of students is that they have to serve their twelve year sentence.
Stop sentencing our children to twelve years without the possibility of parole or even time off for good behavior.
Make education about competency not “doing their time”.
Think about all those times when you sat through a lesson that you already knew and were bored to tears.
Think about all those times when you could have used to go a little slower to get a lesson but couldn’t.
Think about all the time wasted when the teacher had to discipline fellow students who were bored and acted out.
Think about the highly motivated and talented students for whom there was no hope of advancement because they weren’t yet old enough yet to proceed to the next competency.
Think about the economic advantages.
Think about teachers teaching highly motivated students.
Think about the students who will benefit from their hard work by being able to complete school early and begin their careers.
Think about the parents who will have children who will want to go to school.
After you have thought this through, ask your board of education to justify their current method of promoting students. If they have no good justification, push for “true” competency based education; not competency based in name only.
Exactly three hours after the end of Easter Sunday I received the following email from a Christian acquaintance to her Christian friends:
Bud Lite…
A Mexican (an undocumented Democrat), a Black (a documented Democrat), a Muslim and a Redneck were walking together on a beach when the Black stumbled over a bottle in the sand. He picked up the bottle, rubbed the sand off it, and a Genie appeared.
“I can only grant four wishes,” the Genie said. “Since there are four of you, you may have a wish apiece.” Pointing at the Black, he said, “Since you found the bottle, you may have the first wish.” The Black thought for a moment then said, “I wish for a fleet of ships so that I can gather all my people and take them back to our homeland, Africa .” Poof! It was done! Thousands of ships appeared on the skyline.
The Mexican said, “I weesh for enough Cheby peekups to take all my peoples back to our homeland, May-he-co!” Poof! It was done! Row after row of Chevrolet pickups appeared on the beach.
The Muslim said, “I wish for a hundred thousand camels to take all of my people away from this horrible country loaded with infidels so we can live in peace in Muslim countries and serve Allah.” Poof! It was done! A hundred thousand camels suddenly appeared on the beach.
Turning to the Redneck, the Genie asked, “And what is your wish?” The Redneck watched as the loaded pickups began moving toward the border, then looked out to sea and watched the loaded ships sailing out into the sunset, then he looked at all of the Muslims getting on top of the camels and riding off.
The Redneck said, “Just give me a Bud Lite. It don’t get no better than this!”
And Jesus looked around, hung his head in shame at what he saw, went back into the cave and rolled the stone back across the entrance.
I can’t wait to hear what was on the Easter Sunday talk shows!
May all the Christians who showed up to worship today and wish everyone a “Happy Easter”, show up tomorrow at work to act as Christ wanted us to act.
We got Alfie, a three year old rescue, in November of 2014. He has settled in with his “forever family”. He is Alfie 2.0 because he looks exactly like our previous black standard poodle name Alfie.
Although it surely is just “poodle” traits, he really does seem to be a combination of our to previouse standard poodles, Fletchie and Alfa Centauri.
Aside from the usual commands he has learned “cuddles” a call to our bed for a nap. (He is not allowed on our bed otherwise.) When he hears me get the microwave popcorn out he gets super excited and runs to tell my wife and back to me again and again until the corn is popped.
He is becoming more interested in other animal like squirrels, ducks, birds and cats. Actually, one cat, an old wite tom that Alfie loved to make loose its cool. Alfie Centauri did not play by the extablished dog/cat rules of engagement. He didn’t chase cats so that they could run away and up a tree where they could laugh at him with seperiority. No, Alfie initiated a new tupe of warfare. He would sneak up on the cat, and before the cat could run, he pounced and attacked from the air. It seems like this interspecies war shall continue. Don’t know if Alfie 2.0 will adopt the pounce attack strategy.
This is now his house, yard. street and neighborhood. If you don’t belong here he lets you know with a very deep and loud bark. So far, no one has come close enough to see if he would growl.
He has another bark too. He uses this particularly with the grandkids. He uses this to get them to play. Favorite game is hide and seek chase, catch me if you can.
He is currently is working on his AKA Rally designations. Here are some of the Rally things he has learned.
To introduce an experiment, I asked my students if anyone had found any money in the last month? Their ears perked up. They looked at me to see if they needed to call the principal because i had cracked up.
I asked again, an not a single student raised their hand.
Everyone wants happiness, but very few find it. The reason is that they are not actively looking for happiness. We are going to test this theory.
You assignment is to for the next week actively look for money. Obviously, you may not steal it. (I always point that out because for them it is not so obvious, and they would like to say that I told them to steal.) Again I got the crazy looks.
In every class some students always find money.
Do you look for happiness? Where do you look? Do you look in the newspaper? Do you look to your spouse? Do you look to nature? Do you look to a pet?
Where you look is not important. What is important that you start to look and keep on looking.
GOOD LUCK!
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