Craziest person of the day!

Today, I was voted "Craziest person of the day" for June 16, 2008! Woohoo! I owe it all to my neighbors for their attendance of our weekly neighborhood party/get-together kick-off! Thank you all. :)

Morale-O-Meter

Is "No Child Left Behind" still the right choice?

Schools, Facing Tight Budgets, Leave Gifted Programs Behind - New York Times

Bridget Williams, the principal of Mountain Grove Middle School, maintains that very bright children do not deserve specially tailored classes, especially when the district is focusing on bringing all children up to a minimum standard of competence.
Ms. Williams said it was not so much the education, but merely status, that gifted children lost when their program was cut in September. ''They lost the title,'' she said.

She is not, obviously, gifted nor talented. That statement above can only be made out of ignorance. I'm not about to say that I am gifted either, but I managed to skate through 12 years of public school without having to do any real "work". I received A's & B's my entire school career; that is, until college. I had supposedly been taking "college prep" in high school, but when I arrived in college, it was a rude awakening. All-of-a-sudden, I didn't know how to study. I actually had to work to achieve a decent grade. It only took me a semester of college to realize I was "short-changed" by my public school. There are numerous cases where highly intelligent children have severe side-effects when not challenged.

Others contend that cutting programs for such students threatens the nation's future by stunting the intellectual growth of the next generation of innovators. Not only do gifted children learn faster, but often they learn in a different way, experts say.

This is exactly my thought. So, couple the continued reduction in programs geared toward the intelligent with stricter home-school laws, making it increasingly more difficult to teach your (own) children, and what do you get? You get a country that is bleeding all its intelligence away. I fear the innovative-less future of our nation.



Here's another incident. I've always thought it was pretty stupid to deprive a child of learning as a punishment; especially for something like this where intent is clear.

Technorati Tags: news, school, homeschool, parenting, laws

Mercy

Technorati Tags: kids, photography, friends

Inspiration, or discouragement?

For the past couple of months I've been listening to a photography podcast called This Week in Photography, or TWiP. I've listened to other photography podcasts in the past, but I haven't really been inspired, after listening, quite like I have been with this one. I also read a blog of a photographer that has really made an impact on the 'net, in the photography community anyway, and me. I first found Thomas Hawk's blog through digg. He told this story about this ridiculous situation with PriceRightPhoto. I was blown away by how badly a store could behave. I added his RSS feed, and the rest is history.

The real point here is that I listen to this podcast, look through Mr Hawk's photos, and I get inspired to take more pictures. Although, I often get discouraged. These people are so good, even their crappy pictures look better than mine. I often wonder, "how the hell did they even picture that in their mind prior to taking that shot?" I guess the real solution is just to get out there and shoot.

All-in-all though, if nothing else, Mr. Hawk has inspired me to at least get my camera out to take a shot every day. The hard part though, is that sometimes all you can get is a picture of a package of cigarettes.

Technorati Tags: photography, frustration
Photo by me

Yo Joe! I used to love this show!

YOJOE.COM | Cobra Rattler [Ground Attack Jet]

When I was a child I loved machines. I was ecstatic when my parents bought me this war machine for Christmas one year. Now in my reminiscence, I found it! Click the link above to check out this AWESOME toy.

The Cobra Rattler

Technorati Tags: toys, childhood, GI joe

Oh, the agony!

I am so exhausted today. I stayed up way too late watching game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals. 3rd overtime finished up at about 12:45am. It was an intense game, with some good play, & some bad calls. This would have been a freakin' fantastic night had the Red Wings won the cup. Oh well, on to game 6.

(BTW, hockey in HD is AWESOME!!)

Technorati Tags: TV, Red Wings, HDTV, Stanley Cup, hockey

photo by KCJACOBY

You're probably less-free than you think you are...

Memorial day weekend, I got the chance to shoot my buddy's kid's bow. Before this, I hadn't had much opportunity, if at all, to shoot a bow. I had a great time. The following week, I made a point to go to the local archery shop to check out their used bow selection, and see if I could pick up some useful information from the shop guy(s). I was able to shoot a new Ross bow, and boy was it smooth. The whole experience really got my blood pumpin'. It is not my nature to buy anything over $50 on-the-spot, so I left...excited.

While I was in church this past Sunday, I jotted down some notes: things I needed to take care of, or things I just wanted to remember to do. I decided that I needed to research the city ordinances regarding shooting a bow in one's backyard. On to the city website I went.

After sifting through many, many pages of legalese, I found what I was looking for. Shooting of arrows is prohibited. I figured as much, from suburbia; but that's not the area of the law that was concerning to me. There are several instances where what some would consider trivial rules, are prohibited by law. The couple that come to mind are swearing in public, or on school grounds is punishable by up to 90 days in jail or $500 fine, or both; and city parks are restricted to residents, those employed within the city limits, or bona fide guests thereof. That last one is punishable although, I forgot the punishment.

I'm sure this is the tip of the iceberg. And the laws of probability suggests that the majority of the cities are like this, and some with more asinine laws that the few that I have stated. I shudder to think...

Technorati Tags: city ordinances, archery, stupid

Yup, I Think That About Covers Everybody...(PIC)

This is probably one of the funniest digg discussions in a long time! Click the digg link to read the funny-ass comments. No one is left out..

read more | digg story