LIBERTY: GUBAMINT SKOOLZ – the bigest problem – a well-thought out way out!

Friday, August 18, 2006

http://www.mises.org/story/2216

Enterprising Education: Doing Away with the Public School System
by Walter Block and Andrew Young
[Posted on Saturday, August 19, 2006]
***Begin Quote***

All the arguments in favor of a public provision of primary education prove to be unfounded and/or incorrect. The failure of the state to provide a high quality service to all (its explicit goal) has rendered public primary education illegitimate; and the immeasurable waste of resources and rejection of consumer desires has left public education borderline immoral. As well, if an educated citizenry is to be considered necessary for the operation of the republican government, then it is an inexcusable conflict of interest when elected officials are the ones in charge of providing that education. Furthermore, the argument of externalities and nonexcludability fails to buttress the case for socialist education. The only ethical, reasonable system for the provision of primary education is the free market.

***End Quote***

Education is too important to have the gubamint involved at all. Just look at what we have: Immoral (based on theft from taxpayers), Inefficient (e.g.: corruption, vested interests, cronyism, political decisions, agendas galore, dropouts, and private & parochial parents pay for services they don’t want), AND Ineffective (e.g.: poor results, high costs, one size fits all, slows the brightest, too fast for the slowest, discriminates against males, and political control of content).

1 Comment | LIBERTY | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

GUNS: Armed customer stops KFC robbery

Friday, August 18, 2006

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060818/NEWS01/60818008

***Begin Quote***

Maybe gun ownership isn’t so bad afterall…

***End Quote***

The writer, who nominated this link at REDDIT, may be rethinking “victim disarmament”. I hope that they do.

Leave a Comment » | GUNS | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

MONEY: The pension was a great benefit. Right! (continued)

Friday, August 18, 2006

http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/regulation/2006-08-17-pension-overhaul_x.htm

Bush signs massive pension overhaul
Updated 8/17/2006 1:51 PM ET

***Begin Quote***

With its hundreds of pages, the bill seeks to strengthen traditional defined-benefit plans and requires companies to tell workers more about the health of their pension programs. It also nudges workers into putting more money away for their own retirement.

It aims to boost the 30,000 defined-benefit plans run by employers that are now underfunded by an estimated $450 billion. Those plans must reach 100% funding, up from the current 90% requirement, in seven years.
***End Quote***

Hey sounds good right?

Now let’s look behind the curtain.

Defense contractors, exception.  Two big airlines, big exception. Shortfallers get 7 years to catch up (or go bankrupt!). A little pork project to make it palatable and worthwhile for one representative to vote for it! Automatic 401k enrollments because your too stupid to make your own decisions. And, plans with over 120% funding can fund retiree healthcare (a little relief to Medicare?).

Whatta bunch of Barbara Streisand!

This is about helping out their friends in the Airline industry, Defense Contractors, and making sure that the federal Pension Guarantee doesn’t have to pay out too much.

It’s not about rectifying the mistake made in WW2 when the Federal Government winked so that Companies could pay more than the government’s published wage and price controls allowed. We’ve been paying for that mistake ever since.

Here’s a novel idea. Let people make their own decisions.

Pension plans should be “spun out”. Take the assets and divide it among the recipients. Allow them to decide what to do next. I am sure that the Insurance Companies, Stockbrokers, and Mutual Funds can help them with plans that they won’t have to worry about.

(Look up a Vangard Guaranteed Annuity, and see how little one has to pay in fees for that! Then see how everyone is being ripped off by the collusion of the politicians and the companies.)

Bet the airline pilots would have like to have that before those tow special airlines welshed on them!

Unintended consequences.

When the government “protects” me from something, why should I be afraid? I should just be terrified!

1 Comment | MONEY | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

PROD: POWERPOINT is not a document. It’s not even as good as a mind map.

Friday, August 18, 2006

August 14, 2006
PowerPoint printouts used for communicating battle plans?

***Begin Quote***

Ricks quotes an Army Lt. General who was frustrated over getting vague PowerPoint slides sent to him instead of clear orders or plans. Said Ricks:

“That reliance on slides rather than formal written orders seemed to some military professionals to capture the essence of Rumsfeld’s amateurish approach to war planning.” — Thomas Ricks, author of Fiasco

Reliance on slides rather than formal written documents — sound familiar? It should. Remember the findings of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board in 2003?

“The Board views the endemic use of PowerPoint briefing slides instead of technical papers as an illustration of the problematic technical communication at NASA.” — Columbia Accident Investigation Board

Déjà vu.

***End Quote***

Powerpoint is a tool. It allows the speaker givign a presentation to hit the highpoints. There’s nothing deadlier that to be “read” a presentation. Powerpoint is the index card of the presenter. To ensure that major points are not missed.

Leave a Comment » | Productivity | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

TECH: LUGGABLE avoid winrot plan

Thursday, August 17, 2006

LUGGABLE avoid winrot plan,My tentative plan is:

1. delete all downloaded software installer distributions <== DONE

Found that LUGGABLE has THREE partitions. Who knew?
#1 FAT16 47.03M 39.66M Free
#2 NTFS the C drive 90G 23G Free
#3 FAT32 3.02G 404.4M Free

WHY?

2. copy everything from HOMEDESK to the WD500;
3. make an image of HOMEDESK on the WD500;
4. GHOST HOMEDESK to cd;
5. pray;
6. repartition HOMEDESK’s 90 into 10-25-45-10+;
7. reinstall XP into the D drive;
8. see what I have lost?;
9. live happiply ever after?

Leave a Comment » | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

TECH: HOMEDESK winrot correction plan

Thursday, August 17, 2006

HOMEDESK has a bad case of winrot. My tentative plan is:

1. delete all downloaded software installer distributions DONE
2. copy everything from HOMEDESK to the WD500 IN PROGRESS
3. make an image of HOMEDESK on the WD500;
4. GHOST HOMEDESK to cd;
5. pray;
6. repartition HOMEDESK’s 90 into 10-25-45-10+;
7. reinstall XP into the D drive;
8. see what I have lost?;
9. live happiply ever after?

Sounds like a plan. Comments

Leave a Comment » | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

TECH: 1&1 blog maps to WordPress … interesting

Thursday, August 17, 2006

I thought they were actually doing something!

Leave a Comment » | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

RANT: Hospitals in paticular, and medicine men in general, make mistakes

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

In Frau Reinke’s recent encounters with medical “help”, I have seen “mistakes” and “blunders” and out and out stupidity. I’m not surprised that medical malpractice insurance is expensive. More than once we have been impacted by handwriting errors, confused instructions, and “that’s not int he written orders”. Arghhh!

***Begin Quote***

Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2006 17:23:04 PDT
From: “Peter G. Neumann” <neumann@csl.sri.com>
Subject: More on medical errors

A major study lists confusion over names and wrong doses among the mistakes,
and urges more use of computers in prescribing drugs.

At least 1.5 million Americans are injured or killed every year by
medication errors at a direct cost of billions of dollars, according to a
report issued Thursday by the prestigious Institute of Medicine in
Washington, D.C.

For hospitalized patients, the report said that on average, one medication
error per day was caused by confusion in drug names, wrong doses, failure to
deliver drugs or a host of other problems.

The study is a follow-up to a 1999 report from the institute, which is part
of the National Academies, that outlined all medical errors and claimed that
as many as 98,000 people were killed each year as a result of medical errors
— 7,000 of them as a result of medication errors. The study lays out a
detailed series of recommendations for new procedures and research to
minimize the risk of future medication errors, emphasizing computerization
of prescribing and administering drugs and data acquisition.

[Source: Medication Errors Hazardous to Your Health, Thomas H. Maugh II,
*Los Angeles Times*, 21 Jul 2006; PGN-ed, tnx to Lauren Weinstein]
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-sci-drugs21jul21,0,5771929.story?coll=la-home-health

***End Quote***

Leave a Comment » | Ranting | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

RANT: Ms Weinstein requests the pleasure of an answer.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 21:06:54 -0700
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Subject: Survey on putting electronics in checked airline baggage

[ Please distribute widely, as considered appropriate ]

I’m conducting a little unscientific survey on whether or not airline
passengers are willing to place their expensive or important
electronic equipment in airline checked baggage (whether “locked” or
not, but on most flights unlocked will be required), and how this
would affect their flying patterns.

With the above as preface, there are three questions:

1) Are you willing to place all of your significant electronic equipment
(including laptop or other computers, cellphones, DVD players, iPods,
etc.) in checked baggage for airline flights?

2) If you are required to place such electronic equipment in checked
baggage, would it have a significant negative impact on your willingness
to fly?

3) Do you mainly fly for business or pleasure?

I will only publish aggregated statistics from this survey, unless
individual persons specifically note that their responses may be
released publicly.

To participate in the survey, please e-mail a note (or simply
forward this message) with your responses to:

baggage@vortex.com

Only a one word reply is necessary to each of the questions
unless you wish to add comments, which are invited.

Thanks very much.

Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com or lauren@pfir.org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
– People For Internet Responsibility – http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, IOIC
– International Open Internet Coalition – http://www.ioic.net
Moderator, PRIVACY Forum – http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren’s Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
DayThink: http://daythink.vortex.com

= = = = = = = =

My answers:

1) Are you willing to place all of your significant electronic equipment

NO

2) If you are required to place such electronic equipment in checked

YES

3) Do you mainly fly for business or pleasure?

SINCE 9/11, BUSINESS ONLY. AND, THEN ONLY WHEN UNAVOIDABLE!

As a Libertarian, I think the expansion of government is a bigger threat than “terrorism”. The terrorists can only kill us; the government can enslave us “for our own good”. Then, they rob us (taxes). And, then they kill us.

===

But, then anyone who’s read this blog, could have guessed those answers!

Leave a Comment » | Ranting | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

GUNS: Gun “safety” rules!

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

From: “Benjamin Rogers”
Subject: FW: sage advice (UNCLASSIFIED)

These little gun fight principles are good ones to remember:

1. Bring a gun. Preferably, bring at least two guns. Bring all of your friends who have guns.

2. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammo is cheap. Life is expensive.

3. Only hits count. The only thing worse than a miss is a slow miss.

4. If your shooting stance is good, you’re probably not moving fast enough or using cover correctly.

5. Move away from your attacker. Distance is your friend. (Lateral and diagonal movement are preferred.)

6. If you can choose what to bring to a gunfight, bring a long gun and a friend with a long gun.

7. In ten years nobody will remember the details of caliber, stance, or tactics. They will only remember who lived.

8. If you are not shooting, you should be communicating, reloading, and running.

9. Accuracy is relative: most combat shooting standards will be more dependent on “pucker factor” than the inherent accuracy of the gun. Use a gun that works EVERY TIME. “All skill is in vain when an Angel pisses in the flintlock of your musket.”

10. Someday someone may kill you with your own gun, but they should have to beat you to death with it because it is empty.

11. Always cheat, always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.

12. Have a plan.

13. Have a back-up plan, because the first one won’t work.

14. Use cover or concealment as much as possible.

15. Flank your adversary when possible. Protect yours.

16. Don’t drop your guard.

17. Always tactical load and threat scan 360 degrees.

18. Watch their hands. Hands kill. (In God we trust. Everyone else, keep your hands where I can see them.)

19. Decide to be aggressive ENOUGH, quickly ENOUGH.

20. The faster you finish the fight, the less shot you will get.

21. Be polite. Be professional. But, have a plan to kill everyone you meet.

22. Be courteous to everyone. Friendly to no one.

23. Your number one Option for Personal Security is a life-long commitment to avoidance, deterrence, and de-escalation.

24. Do not attend a gun fight with a handgun, the caliber of which does not start with a “4”.

###

Leave a Comment » | GUNS | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »