ScottSA

They forget because it's not true. The legions left, but the Romano-Brits didn't. That's what the problem was. Britain had been colonized for 300 years...it was a Roman province, with villas all across the south and southeast, retired legionaires and their descendants, ex-officials, Roman businesses...everything. And all of it was left in place to fend for itself when the legions left. The only vacuum left was a power vacuum, not a population vacuum. The only depopulation took place by the Picts and Scots, and then by the Saxons.

How do you improve students with 30+ in a classroom? Individual attention, whether through aids or a diagnostic-prescriptive approach will only enhance the academic experience, not the other way around. I taught that way, both in the classroom and in teaching music. Many others have proven the effectiveness of such a teaching method. That's exactly my point. When the teacher is otherwise occupied, it's hard for them to devote individual attention to 'normal' students.

The infamous "left" may be a refuge, but it's also a long standing and appropriate label for folks of certain political persuasions, so I use it as a descriptive of those people who set up a yowl about all aspects of GW I. Saddam didn't use side drilling as an excuse. He used slant drilling as an excuse.

That is one bigotted sick minded article... Replace Muslim with Jew and see how it reads. Coming from you though I am not surprised. Here's a wonderfully enlightened passage: Also forbidden in Islam: pre-marital sex, adultery, and homosexuality. This will obviously help reduce London's appallingly high rates of sexually transmitted disease. And during public executions for the guilty, vigorous aerobic stone-throwing will help build upper-body definition. Just think of it -- instead of a decadent nation of tubby gay pub sots, England will be a happy sultanate filled with believers with the hardbodies to shame Posh 'n' Becks! UK boys will have the six pack abs to impress any celestial virgin, and beneath their burqas UK girls will have the trim figures to fetch a 20-goat dowry for their families! ******* Really scraping the bottom of the barrel eh? Well not surprising since your hero is Mark Steyn the racist bigotted hatemonger. I like you too Buffy! You're kinda hot when you fluff up in outrage. But I must say, if I replaced "Muslim" with Jew it would be kind of silly, since, well, Jews don't wear burkas, trade goats, or stone people to death. Not in the last millenium or two, anyway. They did throw stones at folks fairly recently, but some historians have argued that the nature of the raids on the warsaw ghetto excused that sort of unruly behaviour.The fact is that not one thing he says here is untrue. It might be "bigotted" to claim that sharks eat people, but it's also true, so it renders the biggoted part moot. Should it perhaps be phrased differently? Would that salve your sensibilities? Perhaps if the stonings were referred to as 'pious tossings of pebbles?'

This thread calls into question Harper's previous stance when it came to Preston Manning. I believe the word hypocrite is a appropriate. Lack of transparency is another. Using taxpayer money that is meant for your office seems a misuse of the money. I personally think they should have to account for every penny, don't you? I think this is utter foolishness. I think this is a measure of the absolute lack of any real issue with which to attack Harper.

Harper's strategy was to do nothing. Now we will see if he can sell that policy in Canada. In point of fact, Harper has done more about this CO2 silliness in 6 months than the Liberals did in a decade. That's not a hard thing to do since the Liberals did precisely nothing except sign a treaty and then ignore it unless GWB was in town, when they could take it out and flagellate him with it.

While I believe and agree that your point about racists and bigots being in every party is absolutely right, I think the reason that more Conservatives have not been in trouble as of late is that Harper forbides them from talking without vetting what is to be said. If some of the MP's that currently sit as part of the government where to open their mouths... yikes, I shudder at what we might hear. Ah, so the lack of evidence of bigotry actually PROVES how much worse the CPC is. Excellent reasoning.

All the fawning aside, it still means Harper intends on doing nothing as he states here. http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/070608/..._harper_climate Perhaps he said that because it's true. In fact, no one can meet Kyoto targets except China, who can meet them because it isn't affected by them. He should do even less than he is doing to chase this political silliness in the guise of science.

No one is saying he WAS justified - in their opinion! Sheesh read what I wrote: Do I personally think he was justified? Well, no because I don't beleive you settle things with outright force. But yeah he was given the 'nod' or have you forgotten he was such a useful idiot for the US? Then why did you bring up the drilling? And no, Iraq was not given "the nod." I certainly remember the hoopla over April Gillespie or whatever her name was, but that didn't constitute anything close to "a nod" in spite of the hay the left tried to make with it. The same left, I might add, who went on to claim that up to 60,000 American casualties could be expected from GW I.

...Education Presently, Muslim students sometimes perform less well than non-Muslim students, but only if you limit performance measurement to racism-tinged subjects, like maths. In subjects that are more attuned to a Muslim ethos, such as reciting the Quran whilst being beaten with a stick, Muslim students outperformed their non-Muslim counterparts 78% to 11% in a recent study by the Ministry of Schools... http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2007/...ns_swingin.html

Saddam was not given the nod by the US, Kuwait may or may not have been slant drilling, and a border dispute does not, including 1939, justify an invasion under international law as we know it today. The only caveat to that is if the invasion is allowed by a UNSC resolution.

That in itself is quite a ridiculous statement. Most parents introduce their children to religion because it's their own belief, I think Dawkins would agree completely that parents introduce or impose their religion on their children because it's their own belief. However, he would also argue that it's too early in life. Why would that be? Do they undertake potty training too early too? After all, it's merely a parent's personal belief that children ought not shit all over the living room floor and pee in the oven, eh wot? What about teaching kids "please" and "thankyou?" Ought that wait until a child's brain is fully developed too, lest they become abused by enforced politeness?

Better still, the Canadian government should mete out Biblical punishments for violating religious rules written during the Bronze Age and Iron Age. Leviticus 24:16 has just the right punishment for taking the Lord's name in vain. Exodus 31:15 suggests the identical punishment for working on the Sabbath. How about exactly the same penalty in Exodus 21:17 for cursing at one's father or mother? Let's forget about secular law and use the New Testament, the Old Testament and for Muslims, the Koran. After all, people were so much wiser in the Bronze Age before the era of science and reason. *Zing* What was that mate? Just another strawman running by... I wouldn't necessarily characterize the Bible as a strawman. I'm not talking about the Bible. Comprehension skills not quite up to par today?

Let it be said that I would never take a thread off topic........ .....but the evidence of a less than bellicose Saxon migration is not just from one village...there is archaeological evidence all over the place.....And the recorded histories are as reliable as Herodotus or any ancient chronicler....but never mind...go on Wrong. There are friggin' battle digs everywhere along the Saxon shore and across the entire country, not to mention sacked and burned villas everywhere, including coin hordes not likely left because the owners forgot them. Obviously at some point the invasion turned into a migration, as all invasions tend to, but it's sheer nonsense to claim that the Saxons just came over bearing flowers and gifts and prepared to help build a vibrant and diverse multicutural society. As for discarding the ASC and Hengist and Horsa and everything else...everything else...written about the invasions, not to mention hundreds of battle digs, verbal histories and...well, anyway...think what you want, but it's as ahistorical to suggest the Saxons migrated peacefully as it is to claim the Vikings merely showed up to promote diversity and multiculturalism too.

Better still, the Canadian government should mete out Biblical punishments for violating religious rules written during the Bronze Age and Iron Age. Leviticus 24:16 has just the right punishment for taking the Lord's name in vain. Exodus 31:15 suggests the identical punishment for working on the Sabbath. How about exactly the same penalty in Exodus 21:17 for cursing at one's father or mother? Let's forget about secular law and use the New Testament, the Old Testament and for Muslims, the Koran. After all, people were so much wiser in the Bronze Age before the era of science and reason. *Zing* What was that mate? Just another strawman running by...

Good grief. This thread on nothing was old over a month ago.

That's what aids are for. Or in some cases, the teacher divides the classroom up according to learning levels. There he/she can spend the time where most aptly needed. It can be done, and it is where the teacher earns their money. If the class is going to be divided according to learning levels, doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose? If a student requires an aide, doesn't that say something about the nature of this whole thing? We simply cannot make everyone equal no matter how hard we try. Unfortunately, what we CAN do is drag down the majority to the level of the minority, and that's what appears to be happening in schools. I frankly don't care how hard a life the teacher has trying to ride herd over academic anarchy, but I do care about the result on the kids, and if a teacher is spending huge amounts of time on one or two kids, the rest HAVE to suffer in their education. Totally disagree. When I was student teaching, my teacher taught me the diagnostic prescriptive method, where classes are divided, in her case, into three distinct levels of learning. She was aptly able to manage all levels, but it required a little extra effort. No one suffered. She spent much of her time with those with learning disabilities and expected the smarter students to work independently. She was available at all times for any problems that came up. She taught ALL her classes this way and was very successful. She proved and measured her success with outake and intake assessments. Again, every student got their academic needs met in her classroom. This is anecdotal, subjective, and necessarly imbued with only one viewpoint. It's like someone born blind announcing that they have all their senses...as far as they know, they're right...they have all their senses, because they simply don't know what might have been had they begun with sight. You're saying you didn't suffer a consequence, but how do you know what might have been if the teacher hadn't been distracted by more needy students? In fact, it's counterintuitive and quite likely wrong to say that there were no negative consequences. All through the education system there is a hue and cry, based presumably upon numerous studies, for smaller class size and more individual attention for students. One can only surmise that this hue and cry originates from people who want to improve education and not the other way around.

by Sven Birkerts I was directed to this book a while ago and just read through the first few essays. It's almost certainly destined to be one of those books that someone dusts off 50 years from now and elevates into a classic. It deserves to be too. Published in 94, it seems to have floated along just under the radar since, but it's well worth a read. The links in the following link are concerned with his discussions of the future of literature, but the book itself is a piece of writing art. http://archives.obs-us.com/obs/english/books/nn/bdbirk.htm

That's what aids are for. Or in some cases, the teacher divides the classroom up according to learning levels. There he/she can spend the time where most aptly needed. It can be done, and it is where the teacher earns their money. If the class is going to be divided according to learning levels, doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose? If a student requires an aide, doesn't that say something about the nature of this whole thing? We simply cannot make everyone equal no matter how hard we try. Unfortunately, what we CAN do is drag down the majority to the level of the minority, and that's what appears to be happening in schools. I frankly don't care how hard a life the teacher has trying to ride herd over academic anarchy, but I do care about the result on the kids, and if a teacher is spending huge amounts of time on one or two kids, the rest HAVE to suffer in their education.

I've noticed that (unless the board is heavily moderated) there is a poster on almost every forum that acts like bush_cheney. They seem determined to obfuscate at every opportunity when someone offers a fact or opinion that counters their world view. They rarely bring any real value to a debate and most of their posts are in the one to three sentence range. Has anyone else noticed this? You mean as opposed to the forum biker gangs of liberals shrilly denouncing anyone to the right of Mao?

This missive will surprise people who following my usual posts.Autism is a "spectrum" disorder, ranging all the way from people who wind up like Bill Gates (Aspergers) or Thomas Jefferson (not enough known, but on spectrum) to the prototypical autistic children one sees on TV who have vocabularies of a few words and develop no relationships, even with parents or siblings, of any consequence. The ones on the "higher functioning" end of the spectrum, and society, benefit from their inclusion in a mainstream class. The children on the "higher functioning" end of the spectrum can be taught to "work around" their deficiencies. While this ability is fickle at first, the pattern is that over time, they are functioning "normally" a greater percentage of the time, and even the "abnormal" periods decrease in severity. This has the beneficial effect of making it far more likely that they will be productive, functioning and quite possibly independent members of society. Instead of costing revenues, they'll add revenues as taxpayers. What you call "keepers", at least for the "higher functioning" people range from being aides (to prevent bullying, etc.) to special education teachers. The latter are there to teach children to transition to a more self-sufficient mode. My younger son is one of these children. In nursery school, he would frequently walk over other children as if they were not there, and refuse to participate in group activities. Now, his "bad" days involve unenthusiastic, apathetic participation, and on his "good" days he is almost indistinguishable from other children. For example, one of his "disabilities" was a refusal to participate in athletic activities. One day this past April, while I watched my older son in Little League, he spontaneously joined a soccer scrimmage involving one of his school friends, that friend's father and sibilings, and one other child. He controlled the ball skillfully. I wasn't sure I was watching my own son. Would you have institutionalized him at age four? From your perspective no. And I'm not sure what costs, if any, the education of your son had on the other kids growing up alongside your son in school. But if there were costs to the other kids (and I'm obviously not talking about financial costs), for having an autistic child in the classroom, then it's simply not fair to the other kids. It's just not. Leaving aside autism, it is just not fair to non-handicapped kids to have to learn at the lowest common denominator, and that's exactly what happens when the teacher's attention has to be focused on people who cannot learn, or who learn at an entirely different and much lower level.

I love the shrill leftist response in this thread. The crowds of strawmen sauntering by, the smell of curry in the air... Canada has spent the last few decades promoting immigration as a virtue in and of itself. Sure, there are mumblings now and then about the "economic necessity" of immigration, even though no-one has quite got around to coherently explaining that one, or why a promotion of indigenous birthrates wouldn't be infinitely better, but for the most part immigration has become a leftist shibboleth. It's a rite of passage for the good liberal to announce how unracist and accepting of others they are by embracing the "diversity" and "vibrancy" of multicultural immigration. Hell, in Britain there's even a whole new revisionist school of anthropological thought claiming that Britain is in fact a "nation of immigrants," and painting a rosy hue of lipstick on the theoretical pig by trying to argue that what were hitherto known as the saxon invasions was really an orderly immigration. Full, no doubt, of "vibrancy" and and "diversity." Clearly this is a politically inspired bit of nonsense, based entirely upon conjecture and the excavations of one small village (which don't even support the thesis), and ignores the fact that the Saxon invasions happened within recorded history, and that those records don't support this farce in any way. The problem with this notion of happy happy immigration is that one cannot find, throughout history, ever, a mass immigration that had desireable effects for the indigenous population. Not one. Ever.

Well, let's look at this distinction then. Here's the most comprehensive definition of bigotry I can find...at least that falls outside tautological pap like "Bigotry is the thoughts of a bigot." stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own. You made the statement: I would never, could never, take part in a political party who is supported by every bigot in the country. Notice a match there? I do. This is the eternal pitfall of the intolerant left...it's forever caught in a fatal miasma of contradiction. So apparently bigotry is also a failing we all (read: 'BC Chick') suffer from as well. But you defend that by dragging the red herring of 'prejudice' across the trail, so let's take a look at what that means too: an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason. There is no sense in these definitions that prejudice is limited to thought and that bigotry is thought coupled with power and or action, as you suggest, so we can discard your definition out of hand, I think. Even if we didn't reject it, one might profitably argue that leaders of the Seperatist movement, Liberal leaders, and religious leaders do in fact have the power to "impose harm on to others," so even by your own fabricated distinction, you're wrong. Do you really prefer to be known as someone who forms opinions without knowledge, thought, or reason, than to be known as someone who dislikes opposing ideas? I doubt it, so that leads me to the conclusion that you are caught in Kimmy's headlights and trying to parse your way out of it.

Leftists are well known for simplistic views which assume that everyone else has simplistic views too. Ironically, leftists also believe that they have more complicated views than they really do, and everyone else really does have more intellectual depth than leftists do, so we are forever seeing leftists proclaiming simplistic views as intelligent views and everyone else laughing at them. And slaughtering them at the polls come election time. Some leftists are too dumb even to see the glaring irony of driving about in a smelly CO2 belching VW bus with Green Party bumper stickers on the back bumper.

That was Peter the Ant. He led a crusade to the end of the driveway to reconquer the third crack to the left from the devilspawn grasshoppers. Unfortunately the grasshoppers enslaved them and converted them to grasshopperhood.