Interestings, Fri. Sept. 04

Interestings for the Week

What is an interesting, you ask?

It comes from a now-older KDUP radio show called The Mean Saints, in which a couple of friends of mine pretended to be miraculously radio-ized dead saints Athanasius and Jerome, and Jerome accidentally said "an interesting about G.K. Chesterton" instead of "an interesting fact about..." Anyway, it got me and a friend from the Faith and Leadership House using adjectives as nouns like no tomorrow. So here's some interestings from the last week that I've picked up, blogosphere or otherwise.

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I found an interesting. Apparently, according to the USCCB and numerous Vatican documents, health care is a right,, not a privilege. I'm down with that. The unfortunate thing is, well...

Catholic teaching on health care + Catholic teaching on why the heck health care is even a right in the first place --> If any governmental system, a governmental system that nobody wants to run because it won't be allowed to provide abortion.

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There's an awesome about the new NIV Bible coming out...

How does that make you feel? If you're reading this you probably knew already, but at any rate. Roger Pearse, a hobbyist of classics and church Fathers, gives an awesome here. He also provides what amounts to in my mind a thought-provoking (if unintentional) commentary on the nature of corruption, as opposed to legit theological development.

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Do yourself a favor and check out the gigantic that is Brickistan. It's a city made of Legos and it is nothing short of crazy. Overview photo of Brickistan follows:


So go to the Flickr page and check it out in detail.

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Here's an impressive. The President is apparently going to give some speech to school kids about staying in school and trying hard or somesuch other after-school-special stuff that the kids probably really do need to hear, and some parents don't want it heard because they're afraid Obama's going to go socialist on their kids.

The official government website for the speeches is here and contains some classroom materials. I'm still not sure I really understand what the criticism is. I'm also putting this forth regardless of the question of how outraged we'd be if Bush wanted to talk to our nation's children without parental consent or...state education oversight of speech content? are you kidding? If Obama had said "I'm going to talk to the children about health care," then there'd be concern. Then this would be political, like if Bush had wanted to talk to kids about the War on Terror, which is, sadly, a much more politicized animal than anyone wants it to be.

But quite frankly if anyone who's the President of the USA wants to present an after-school-special message to kids about trying your hardest and how YOU can make a difference or whatever. If anyone's got an actual excerpt of this speech that shows it championing socialism, I'd like to see it. The White House plans to release the speech on Monday, a day before it's given, so opponents will have their chance to skim it for socialism if they want. As far as I can tell, though unless Obama tells the kids they're clinging bitterly to small-town values, he's fine. As it stands the only real case I've heard made consists of empty rhetoric, and that's not cool.

But it sure makes for a fun week.

What the Hetts?! #N: Wow

A high school senior kicked major butt on, like, every standardized test ever.

Amazing.

"What the hetts?!"

Yay, School

Funny news story:

This is pretty much the ultimate prank, and pretty awesome for a high school student. How do you guys feel about the punishment given? I almost think it was a little bit harsh.

Update on School:

Classes are going. That's about all I can really say about them right now, is they're going. Not badly or well, necessarily. I haven't missed any homework (which reminds me, I need to read Jonah for tomorrow) and I'm adjusting to the three-class block I have Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I also like my Thursdays (just Differential Equations, nothing more!)

What the Hetts?! #15: This is...Sparta?; also, CostCo

I'd recommend you take a second before reading to remember that I'm about to link you to an article that's purporting the facts. Not opinion or conjecture or conspiracy theory--no, facts. As in if this isn't true, someone owes the world a big explanation. And if it is true--which it seems to be--well, I guess the Pentagon's already done its explaining. I can't guarantee any of these links will be child-safe reading, but they could be at least entertaining. A couple of the comments on Dispatches are funny, at least. I saw this linked first in this DigitalMZX thread, and secondly linked on Dispatches from the Culture Wars. I'm not kidding you on this. The third link is the link to the article--it's found here. So there you have it...our government apparently conspired to change the sexual orientation of enemy soldiers.

"What the Hetts?!"

Also, I've been discussing Ron Paul, politics, theology, and a whole host of other things recently with Andy, a friend from UP who is actually going to be one of my RAs next year...Something fun came up in our conversation just tonight that I'll post here:

[11:04:14 PM] KKairos> i think if i ever actually get into education i'm going to do my best to try and cut down on the spending that has to come from my school
[11:04:17 PM] KKairos> whether it's public or private
[11:04:33 PM] KKairos> ...in other words i'll be getting a costco membership and doing my supplies shopping there
[11:04:35 PM] Andy> cool man, that will take you far, i think
[11:04:39 PM] Andy> haha, nice
[11:04:52 PM] KKairos> that's what they should really do, is get costco memberships for public schools
[11:05:01 PM] KKairos> if they haven't already
[11:05:20 PM] Andy> hmm, that's a good idea, i don't know if they do or not
[11:05:24 PM] KKairos> $100 worth of pencils will last them like 10 years
[11:05:32 PM] KKairos> perhaps that's a bit extreme, but you get the idea
[11:05:46 PM] Andy> until they go out of style, but yep i got your drift

Hamas and Education; also, books

So, here's an interesting article on CNN about the state of education in Palestinian schools. Let's not get into any controversy about the surrounding situation, here. The stuff I'm worried about is the idea of ideological bias in schools. I know that in general that should be bad enough, but here we're talking about Hamas getting more and more power over education in Palestine.

Among the causes for concern, are Hamas' desire to use textbooks that are less just-the-facts than those of their much more moderate counterpart, the Fatah movement (at least, I've never heard Fatah called a terrorist group), allegations of Holocaust denial in the histories Hamas wants to teach, and the allegation that many open government positions are being filled by Hamas candidates who are far from the most qualified for the job. Religious indoctrination is not necessarily more of a concern than before, although there has been in at least one area an added religion class per week--and a couple of female students reported being hassled and pressured to wear traditional women's Muslim garb. So in my opinion, it could be.

The original article is quite long, but I seriously recommend the read.

What do you guys think?

Also, books:

Finished Neuromancer and The Fountainhead. Now on to Good Omens, then Ficciónes while I'm in Mexico. Then when I get back I'm going to try and tackle Gődel, Escher, Bach before school starts again. If I still have time after GEB, then I read Dune. If I actually get through Dune, I'll have gotten my reading list completed. Either way it'll be an accomplishment by the standards of someone who's never actually forced himself to read five books in a summer before.

What the Hetts?! #13: A Double Whammy

Yes, yes...As the result of my having found two stories thus far today, there will be not just one but TWO stories for this week's "What the Hetts?!" To get the original story click on the header.

1) Internet Taxes

The story came through Slashdot. Apparently there are some over in Washington who feel that it would be a good idea to tax the internet. So our internet connections and what we shop for online could become susceptible to various taxes...Actually, it seems as though depending on where we live, we may be intended to voluntarily cough up cash for stuff we buy online--at least according to this article we are. And this would make that essentially voluntary taxation an enforced thing.

The other aspect of this debate is that some in Congress want to enable the government to tax internet access; here I think they mean mostly broadband. One member of our wonderful Congress even claims we could see taxes on e-mail. I'm a bit irked.

"What the Hetts?!"

2) UK School Ignoring the Holocaust

This one also came from Slashdot. Apparently there's a history department in the UK that's ignoring the Holocaust. It's because it's afraid of encountering anti-Israel sensibility in certain segments of its Muslim student population. Apparently there's been some "resistance" (from the article) over the teaching of the Crusades, which are covered by local mosques differently from how they're covered in the classroom. Lastly there was even a bit of resistance from Christian parents who wanted the Israeli-Palestinian conflict taught a certain way.

It's good to note that, as Snopes points out, this isn't a UK-wide ban on Holocaust teaching and it's only one history department. Still, it's sort of scary.

"What the Hetts?!"

Can an Extended Kindergarten Help Kids?

Apparently some schools are implementing full-day kindergarten in an effort to help give students more knowledge. And, although there is skepticism about long-term effects of such programs (how helpful they really are long-term) there appears to be a positive correlation between these new daylong kindergartens and higher reading scores and math scores in the 3rd grade tests.

Check out the article here, and please feel more than free to comment on the blog. We've upgraded to Blogger 2.0 or whatnot. (By comment on the blog I mean the thing linked to as well as the look; whichever you feel the need to pour out your heart about.)