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On 5-7-2015 13:12, Doctor John wrote:
> On 05/07/15 12:04, Thomas de Groot wrote:
>> On 5-7-2015 12:47, Stephen wrote:
>>> On 7/5/2015 11:02 AM, Doctor John wrote:
>>>> On 05/07/15 09:29, Stephen wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> You should get rid of home schooling. That is a bad thing IMO.
>>>>> Discuss. ;-)
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> How many words? ...
>>>
>>> Until you get bored.
>>>
>>> and should we use both sides of the paper?
>>>>
>>>
>>> No. Single side and double line space.
>>>
>>
>> I
>>
>> agree
>>
>> ..
>>
>>
>
> This
>
> is
>
> getting
>
> silly
>
> J
> o
> h
> n
>
Quod
erat
demonstrandum
.
--
Thomas
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Am 05.07.2015 um 09:55 schrieb Cousin Ricky:
> On 2015-07-04 08:40 AM (-4), clipka wrote:
>> Congratulations to your independence, USA!
>>
>> Now if only you'd let other contries have theirs, too...
>
> Isn't Greece scheduled to declare its independence from Germany today?
Oh, believe me - we'd happily let them.
It's when they /want/ something from us - like, say, borrow money - that
we kindly ask them for a favor in return - like, say, make sure they can
start paying it back in a few decades.
Wasn't that what ticked off the USA back then, too? No money without
something in return?
In the international press the conflict might appear to be about Greece
being held hostage by its current creditors on the basis of their
current debts. It's not - it's primarily about Greece asking to be
provided with /more/ borrowed money.
The EU had already agreed to those additional debts, /provided/ that
Greece implement some reforms, which Greece had also agreed upon, but
now refuses to implement. (Not that I'd blame them for that refusal - I
think those reforms are useless at best - but their new government
wasn't particularly smart about how they approached the EU about this.)
So is it any surprise that the EU's reply is, "fine - but then you won't
get the money either"?
Well, actually it's more like, "please, think it over - we're worried
what your collapse might do to the Euro".
So at the bottom line it's really about Greece holding the Euro hostage
and blackmailing their creditors into relaxing their demands for reforms
attached to the promised further credits. And today the Greek people
decide whether they want to set the hostage free.
That all said, I think Germany's darkest spot on their perfectly white
clothes is not how they treat Greece about the current issues, but how
they reacted to Greece's demands to make amends for the time /before/
they gained their independence from Germany some 70 years ago.
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On 7/5/2015 1:18 AM, Cousin Ricky wrote:
> (I'm tempted to add fundamentalist Christianity. However, my analysis
> is that the hyper-religious Americans--including politicians who are
> under the delusion that they run this country--are being punked by money
> via use of fear.)
>
This might be true, if a significant number of the money grubbers where
not also Fundie Christians. While I don't doubt that a lot of them are
the US flavor of Libertarian (I have mine, so F everyone else), there is
a heavy cross over between them, with even most Libertarians espousing
that they, "believe in the almighty god!", it, apparently, helps them a
great deal in denying things like climate change, when their personal
magic wizard either won't let things get bad enough, for them, that they
need worry about silly shit like global weather patterns, and/or will
"magic" any problems away for them, if they just push the right
restrictive legislation through on all those damn liberals, and
unbelievers (which is, of course, the same thing, after all).
So, no.. This is a bit like suggesting that medieval kings where being
"duped" by the church - rather than being active participants in the
mass delusion, out of mutual selfish interests.
The fear they reserve for gullible idiots who have no money, but, often,
lots, and lots, of religion. Such people are not, after all, human
enough to "understand" what such wondrous visionaries want to do for
them, so they have to be scared into doing/allowing what is best for
them. Duh!!
Should deport the lot of them, but every place that would take them is
either being slowly overrun by Islam, or would actually go from being a
third world nation, to an global threat, within less than a decade, if
we did such a thing. And, as amusing as it would be for the two groups
of fundie wackos to shoot each other, should we deport them to the
places run by the same flavor of nitwits, the innocent caught in the
cross fire don't deserve that.
--
Commander Vimes: "You take a bunch of people who don't seem any
different from you and me, but when you add them all together you get
this sort of huge raving maniac with national borders and an anthem."
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Am 05.07.2015 um 10:18 schrieb Cousin Ricky:
> So I'll just leave you with two words: Money. Fear.
>
> (I'm tempted to add fundamentalist Christianity. However, my analysis
> is that the hyper-religious Americans--including politicians who are
> under the delusion that they run this country--are being punked by money
> via use of fear.)
Yup, "fear" is the one word that fundamentalist Christianity boils down to.
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On 7/5/2015 2:46 PM, clipka wrote:
> Am 05.07.2015 um 09:55 schrieb Cousin Ricky:
>> On 2015-07-04 08:40 AM (-4), clipka wrote:
>>> Congratulations to your independence, USA!
>>>
>>> Now if only you'd let other contries have theirs, too...
>>
>> Isn't Greece scheduled to declare its independence from Germany today?
>
> Oh, believe me - we'd happily let them.
>
> It's when they /want/ something from us - like, say, borrow money - that
> we kindly ask them for a favor in return - like, say, make sure they can
> start paying it back in a few decades.
>
> Wasn't that what ticked off the USA back then, too? No money without
> something in return?
>
>
> In the international press the conflict might appear to be about Greece
> being held hostage by its current creditors on the basis of their
> current debts. It's not - it's primarily about Greece asking to be
> provided with /more/ borrowed money.
>
> The EU had already agreed to those additional debts, /provided/ that
> Greece implement some reforms, which Greece had also agreed upon, but
> now refuses to implement. (Not that I'd blame them for that refusal - I
> think those reforms are useless at best - but their new government
> wasn't particularly smart about how they approached the EU about this.)
> So is it any surprise that the EU's reply is, "fine - but then you won't
> get the money either"?
>
> Well, actually it's more like, "please, think it over - we're worried
> what your collapse might do to the Euro".
>
> So at the bottom line it's really about Greece holding the Euro hostage
> and blackmailing their creditors into relaxing their demands for reforms
> attached to the promised further credits. And today the Greek people
> decide whether they want to set the hostage free.
>
>
All that is one point of view. Certainly the one we get from all the
pundits.
When I've listened to the Greek politicians being interviewed. They all
say that the current situation puts them in the position of loan shark
victims. Well, that's what it sounds like to me, paraphrased.
I think the Euro zone banks should give Greece loans at a rate that can
be paid back without grinding the faces of the proletariat, any further.
Whoops! <gets back down off soap box>
I don't see how setting up contracts that cannot be fulfilled is helping
anyone.
> That all said, I think Germany's darkest spot on their perfectly white
> clothes is not how they treat Greece about the current issues, but how
> they reacted to Greece's demands to make amends for the time /before/
> they gained their independence from Germany some 70 years ago.
>
It just makes memories longer. :-(
In Crete. I've had the owner of a restaurant throw his arms around me.
Then drag me into the kitchen to see what they were eating. Because I
was an English tourist in a German tourist restaurant.
They have long memories.
--
Regards
Stephen
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Cousin Ricky <ric### [at] yahoo com> wrote:
> I tried to compose a simple explanation for why my country is such a
> bullying control freak, but there always seemed to be another pertinent
> point to add, and my "simple" explanation started looking like a POV-Ray
> 3.7 release candidate.
>
> So I'll just leave you with two words: Money. Fear.
Yep. Our politicians love money too much, and lobbying is somehow legal. Fear is
used to manipulate people into endorsing the govt.'s atrocious activities.
I think most US Americans know *something* is seriously wrong, but their concern
is often artfully diverted to focus on hyped-up threats, and away from the
termites chewing away the underlying framework.
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Am 05.07.2015 um 18:44 schrieb Stephen:
> When I've listened to the Greek politicians being interviewed. They all
> say that the current situation puts them in the position of loan shark
> victims. Well, that's what it sounds like to me, paraphrased.
> I think the Euro zone banks should give Greece loans at a rate that can
> be paid back without grinding the faces of the proletariat, any further.
> Whoops! <gets back down off soap box>
> I don't see how setting up contracts that cannot be fulfilled is helping
> anyone.
Well, of course that's what the Greek politicians say in interviews.
They have a people to please. I was quite optimistic about Tsipras and
his team, but now it seems to me that he is - and always has been - more
interested in becoming popular by pointing the finger at the creditors
and shouting "foul" rathern than really tackling Greece's problems.
You are aware that the money the Greek government wants from the EU has
ZERO interest for quite a while, and is only due to be paid back several
decades from now? That's hardly loan shark practice.
(Now the short-term money the Greek /banks/ want, that's an entirely
different story; but that money is not at the heart of the issue -
that's just part of the fallout.)
Also, the EU isn't really breaking Greece's fingers. They're just
demanding from Greece the equivalent of pulling itself together and
getting a decent job (or at least what the EU thinks is a decent job).
So they're not in the position of loan shark victims - they're in the
position of someone with a questionable lifestyle asking his relatives
for money /again/ but refusing their demands for already agreed-upon
steps to get his life together, and then pulling the victim card when
they make a fuss about his change of mind.
And that picture fails to include Greece's threat to pull down the Euro
with them.
Tsipras' strategy, from the start on, seems to have been to play chicken
with the EU. Riding a scooter against a pick-up truck, which may or may
not be carrying some highly flammable load.
Bad idea. Even /if/ the truck is driving on the wrong side of the road.
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On Sun, 05 Jul 2015 09:29:59 +0100, Stephen wrote:
> You should get rid of home schooling. That is a bad thing IMO.
> Discuss. ;-)
We home schooled our son for the last 5 years or so of his school career.
So, no, I disagree. :)
He passed his GED with top marks, went to uni, was on the deans' list
most of the time he was there, and graduated with honours - from the
University of Utah with a degree in Anthropology.
The Christian fundamentalists who homeschool give homeschooling a bad rap
in the US. There are people who do it properly - and in our case, the
reason we did it was because we ultimately had little choice but to step
up and home school him.
He was in a private school for highly intelligent students with learning
disabilities (the two go together a lot more often than one might think).
This is a kid (well, an adult, now) with a near photographic memory -
scored the highest on the test given by the admitting psychologist in the
school (yes, they test the kids before admitting them to the school in
question). Most of his classmates had mild to severe ADD/ADHD (again,
diagnosed, not just "oh, this kid is fidgety so let's give him some drugs
to calm him down".)
He was enrolled there for 5 years or so. The school had an outdoor
program that was meant to offset the lack of any significant athletic
program (not enough students in any given grade or group of grades even
for team sports). So the school required a lot of teamwork in the form
of camping activities and other outdoors stuff.
Except the program wasn't run with safety in mind - and on more than one
occasion, students (and staff) ended up in the hospital because the staff
weren't properly trained in first aid for the difficulty of activities
they were engaged in.
So we pulled him out of the school, right before the fall term.
Our choices were:
1. Re-enroll him in public school (which doesn't mean the same thing in
the US as it does in the UK), at his current grade level, which he had
already been through in his advanced classes.
2. Re-enroll him in public school at a grade level appropriate to his
knowledge and skills (which creates social problems for kids who do that
- my wife and I both saw that up close).
3. Continue his education ourselves.
We chose option 3.
Jim
--
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw
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On 7/5/2015 9:35 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sun, 05 Jul 2015 09:29:59 +0100, Stephen wrote:
>
>> You should get rid of home schooling. That is a bad thing IMO.
>> Discuss. ;-)
>
> We home schooled our son for the last 5 years or so of his school career.
>
> So, no, I disagree. :)
>
> He passed his GED with top marks, went to uni, was on the deans' list
> most of the time he was there, and graduated with honours - from the
> University of Utah with a degree in Anthropology.
>
> The Christian fundamentalists who homeschool give homeschooling a bad rap
> in the US.
They certainly do. From what I've read. There is no requirement for the
children to be assessed, by many states. That is dereliction of duty, in
my book.
> There are people who do it properly - and in our case,
I won't ask who rattled your cage. Me obviously. :-)
And just as obviously there need to be exceptions depending on
circumstances. After all, there are some remote isolated communities in
all of that land. But Weirdos and religious throwbacks should not have
the right to brainwash more generations of children. And that goes for
Europe and the UK too.
the
> reason we did it was because we ultimately had little choice but to step
> up and home school him.
>
It sounds like you made the right choice. It is not something I would
like to take the responsibility for. Too much like hard work. :-)
--
Regards
Stephen
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On 7/5/2015 9:09 PM, clipka wrote:
> Am 05.07.2015 um 18:44 schrieb Stephen:
>
>> When I've listened to the Greek politicians being interviewed. They all
>> say that the current situation puts them in the position of loan shark
>> victims. Well, that's what it sounds like to me, paraphrased.
>> I think the Euro zone banks should give Greece loans at a rate that can
>> be paid back without grinding the faces of the proletariat, any further.
>> Whoops! <gets back down off soap box>
>> I don't see how setting up contracts that cannot be fulfilled is helping
>> anyone.
>
> Well, of course that's what the Greek politicians say in interviews.
> They have a people to please. I was quite optimistic about Tsipras and
> his team, but now it seems to me that he is - and always has been - more
> interested in becoming popular by pointing the finger at the creditors
> and shouting "foul" rathern than really tackling Greece's problems.
>
> You are aware that the money the Greek government wants from the EU has
> ZERO interest for quite a while, and is only due to be paid back several
> decades from now? That's hardly loan shark practice.
>
No I wasn't. I was probably only listening with half an ear. I thought I
heard that their loans are more expensive because of their credit
rating. Hardly indeed.
>
> Also, the EU isn't really breaking Greece's fingers. They're just
> demanding from Greece the equivalent of pulling itself together and
> getting a decent job (or at least what the EU thinks is a decent job).
>
I don't think that is a valid analogy, comparing a whole country to one
individual. As the song goes.
It's the rich that gets the pleasure and the poor what gets the blame.
> So they're not in the position of loan shark victims -
Okay, I was wrong. Write it in your diary. ;-)
>
> And that picture fails to include Greece's threat to pull down the Euro
> with them.
>
>
There is something wrong with the Euro then. If one dodgy member
removing its dodgyness, brings it down.
> Tsipras' strategy, from the start on, seems to have been to play chicken
> with the EU. Riding a scooter against a pick-up truck, which may or may
> not be carrying some highly flammable load.
>
> Bad idea. Even /if/ the truck is driving on the wrong side of the road.
Well, there are a few countries that are quite successful at that.
(Pointing to elbows at North Korea.)
--
Regards
Stephen
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