Words Fail Me category archive

Now they need recess consultants, apparently because third graders’ unstructured play is a bad thing.

One more time, is there some sort of intelligence test persons must fail so as to become school administrators?

(Remember what a consultant is: Anyone more than 50 miles from home toting a laptop bag.)

Via Thoreau.

The scammers have a new target.

Conversation is building in Washington on this question: Would the FAA be better able to handle its regulatory duties if the day-to-day operations of air traffic control were privatized?

The FAA, in a burst of sanity, is against the idea. Those who favor are it, natch, the folks who believe that there is no such thing as the public good.

Details of the con at the link.

You have to see it or you’ll think I made it up.

Sexist pig frolics.

They never just go away, do they?

You can’t make this stuff up.

I say, Good for them!

They usually refuse to go back into the bag.

When Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican President, “bully” was a compliment.

Now it’s the Republican lifestyle.

He must think he is truly a special snowflake.

The crime is more common in Western mountain towns, where people cut down – even poison – their neighbors’ trees for a better view.

But “vanity logging,” as it’s sometimes called, could apply to the alleged acts of a lawyer-turned-Zumba instructor who lives outside New Hope.

Police say David L. Topel felled 22 of his neighbor’s old-growth hardwoods – preserved by a conservation easement and worth $260,000 – because they obscured his deck’s southern vista.

“Lawyer-turned-Zumba instructor.” How he missed his true calling as a Wall Street bankster will forever remain a mystery.

No self-awareness. No self-awareness whatsoever.

There’s a Beer Advertising Code.

You were, as my old boss used to say, “in error.”

He’s 66. She’s now 18 and a mother.

The only surprising thing about this story is that he’s not a “family values” Republican. This sort of stuff is usually the territory of “family values” Republicans, but he calls himself a Democrat.

What’s really screwy is that, after his “dalliance” came out and he got hauled into court for “dallying” with an underage girl, he resigned his office and then got reelected in a special election over the opposition of his own party, emphasizing that what is ultimately wrong with our elected representatives is the voters–and the non-voters.

I got no problem with lust. I understand lust; there is a time and a place for lust. Yes, there is such a thing as “safe lust.”

It’s the stupid . . . . It overwhelms.

Via my local rag.

Honest to Pete, you can’t make this stuff up.

. . . and I have never played Boggle.

About one-third of Virginia’s students aren’t ready for kindergarten in at least one learning category, according a two-year study published recently by researchers at the University of Virginia.

Those categories include literacy, math, social skills and self-regulation – children’s ability to manage their emotions and behavior. About 20 percent of students lack the needed social skills. About 11 percent lack literacy skills, and 8.5 percent aren’t ready for math, according to the report.

Five-year-olds are supposed to be ignorant. That’s what schools are for.

Words fail me.

Afterthought:

“Educational science” has become a scam.

Of course, back in the olden days, when I was a young ‘un, it was widely rumored that persons who concentrated in the “E-School” did so because they were unable to cut it in a real major, such as history or physics or chemistry or sociology or even for Pete’s sake Art History. That seems to be unchanged.

We are a society awash in stupid.

Ignorance can be cured. The cure is called “learning.”

Stupid has no cure.

I shall stop now. Otherwise, I shall just sputter.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

You can’t make this stuff up.