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It’s well documented that our modern schools are based on a 19th century Prussian model originally conceived as the path to improving the fighting ability of their soldiers. The key was to break the natural loyalty of the childrent to their families and replace it with loyalty to the state. From John Taylor Gatto’s excellent site on the history of modern schooling:

Children would have to be disciplined through a new form of universal conditioning. They could no longer be trusted to their parents. Look what Napoleon had done by banishing sentiment in the interests of nationalism. Through forced schooling, everyone would learn that “work makes free,” and working for the State, even laying down one’s life to its commands, was the greatest freedom of all.

It is this school system that our captains of industry adopted in America to produce better factory workers. (Ever wonder where kindergarten comes from or why we still use that German word to describe it?) The idea was to focus on discipline and obedience to arbitrary authority figures at the expense of family ties, common sense, and independent thought.

I don’t really have anything to add to Mr. Gatto’s excellent writing on the subject, but it is definitely something to be aware of especially if you have kids. Makes those alternative schools sound very attractive.

“And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes.”

this techno remix of the speech by ted stevens, republican senator from alaska, is my favourite thing so far today. ah, good times. and remember…if you don’t vote, who exactly are you electing?

Hey peeps guess what? I Found a Job! (Damn that television, what a bad picture…!)

Yeah mis amigos, it’s up in Boulder at one of those International High Tech Companies that produces stuff we didn’t need a few years ago but definitely need now.

Everything’s an acronym. We don’t have Conference Rooms, we have CRs. Seriously! I feel right at home!!

We’re in one of those mixed-OS environments, like we had at MapQuest, with Windows running on the desktop so we can do the Corporate Outlook-and-Word thing to keep management happy and use Exceed to log in to various Unix/Linux boxes to do actual work that has value and stuff.

So I’m talking to my boss (who BTW is from Mexico, which I think is pretty cool) who is using IE to log in to some intranet site and trying to print some documentation for me and it just won’t work.

After a few tries he mumbles it’s time to Do the Bill Gates.

What does he mean?

a) He’s going to do a special engineering dance invented by Bill Gates.

b) He’s going to get some coffee and let the computer descansar.

c) He’s going to joder (do) Bill Gates.

d) He’s going to reboot the machine.

e) All of the above.

f) None of the above.

For the correct answer, kiddies, click on Comments!

Really starting to regret moving to Littleton. Here’s why:

• No bars. Well, there are some, but not very many. Apparently its insanely difficult to get a liquor license in Littleton. The majority are the “bar” half of “bar and grill” type chain restaurants (see below) which close at 10 PM.
• There are enough dipshit Christians in the vicinity to support a Mardel store. If you haven’t seen it, it is a warehouse “Christian supply” store. I’ve not ventured inside yet, but I’m very curious as to just what they are filling that huge place up with. How many crucifixes can there be?
• Home of the Columbine massacre.
• Strip malls with national chain stores make up about 99% of the retail space.
• Shitty access to highways. Try driving down Hampden Avenue where the speed limit goes from 65 to 55 to 45 to 35 to 40 to 45 between Kipling and I-25. There are cops from four different municipalities patrolling in force every day. Especially bad are the Sheridan cops near the Federal Blvd intersection. I don’t even drive this road any more because if you miss a speed limit change you have a very good chance of getting a ticket. Littleton’s other highway? C-470, the highway to Highlands Ranch. What more can I say?

One thing that Littleton has going for it is the South Suburban Recreation District. Very nice facilities, classes, etc. Our address puts us in the Foothills Recreation District which also is pretty good. So I guess it could be worse.

But then, you already knew this, didn’t you?

I love this stuff and I haven’t posted a good time sink link since Hell of Sand.

The executive level summary: Those old text adventure games you loved as a kid like Infocom’s Zork? They are alive and well. Thanks to no less than two world class authoring systems (Tads and Inform) and more than a dozen others the masses can now write their own games. And they have been since the early nineties.

You can poke around the IF Archive site for all kids of good stuff, but these are some of my favorite games:

(Note : You’ll need a player like WinFrotz to play these games. If you’re running linux then you’ll want to pick up frotz).

• Anchorhead: Absolutley stunning homage to H.P. Lovecraft. One of the few IF games to feature a female lead character.
• Janitor: You play the guy who has to clean up after the last guy who played the game.
• Curses: The game that started the IF homebrew scene. Tons of puzzles. Great story.
• Dreamhold: A good tutorial if you’re having trouble getting going.
• The Meteor, the Stone and a Long Glass of Sherbet: Another great one.
• The Wedding: Probably my favorite IF game.

There you go. This is no where near complete, but its a good place to start. If you find some others you like, post them in the comments.

Nad hates these because he has to think.

Update: Wikipedia has this great introduction to IF

This is the face of America to the rest of the world. I hope you’re proud.

Propz to tha RudePundit, from his Happy Birthday, Stump post.

Update (by Cannonballer): Don’t forget to check out David Wong’s Ultimate War Sim article over at Pointless Waste of Time. It’s a couple of years old but still relevant.

According to slashdot, the director of the FBI’s password was cracked by a simple dictionary attack. They did not disclose the password. So the question is: What was his password?

Get guessing!

Seeing how most of the flat earthers are misanthropic loners who loathe sports because of a few jocks in high school who taped their buns together, there is a decided lack of enthusiasm for the World Cup around here. This is understandable from other perspecitves as well, namely that fact that soccer players come off mamby-pamby girlie men the way they are always falling down and grabbing their shins. I should point out that this has more to do with the fact that soccer has no delayed penatlies than anything else, but that is another topic for another day.

I’m not writing to discuss the ins and outs of soccer or its goofy rules (the offisdes rule is there to decrese scoring - what?!?). Its the wily Germans who are hosting the World Cup this year, and they’ve got everyone’s attention. Their team as done better than expected (even if they were defeated in their semifinal match against Italy), but it’s not their performance that’s raising eyebrows. The Germans are so excited about their team that they’ve taken to waving their flag around, painting its colors on their faces, and other variations on the theme. This has caused no small amount of hand wringing and navel gazing as to whether or not, some 60 years after World War II, it is appropriate for the Germans to show a little nationalism.

Come on guys, this is Germany we’re talking about. This is the same culture that produced my grandma Trudy who once confided in me in all seriousness that God put here on the earth to keep her family in line — she has a divine mandate to tell people what to do. So I say, let ‘em go nuts! Oh and if you hear the tanks firing up that’s just because you have to turn the engine over a couple of times a year to keep them running well. Seriously, it’s just maintenance.

Kidding, kidding. Come on, what harm could there be?

d00d! wtf si this guy sayin:

Yesterday’s Hamdan decision at the Supreme Court basically said that Congress and the courts still have some power, despite the sick orgy of centralizing power in the hands of a rank amateur monarch-wannabe so head-thickened and brow-lowered with caste-based inbreeding that the lowest markers of general intelligence - like sentence construction and primary mathematics - are debased to a point where the poor fucktard must weep every morning in sub-mongoloid rage at that he is unable to carry out even the most basic functions of human existence and thought, like logic and ass-wiping, so he is surrounded by stewards and toadies who do it all for him, all the “If a and b, then c” (for, surely, left to his own devices, the President’s logical progression would be something like, “If a and b, then tuna”) and the ensuring that the Commander in Chief doesn’t have a vague shit smell coming off him.

I wish u wud jst talk lik a normel persen LOLZ