SEAL76 wrote:The school district where I am employed fired four math teachers and hired two new athletic coaches. That is wack. We don't pass the state tests in math and reading but we can afford athletics. I do not think that we should get rid of mandatory PE but after school sports needs to go if budgets there is a lack of funding for academics.
I was going to respond to this much sooner, but I needed time to think of what I was going to say.
Well, it appears that we as a people have made a choice. We no longer care about academics. All we want is some kind of heros to look up to, athletic heros to put up on a pedestal to worship as gods.
You can tell if a civilization is on the decline when we as a society become more obsessed over sports and less interested in academics.
Of course, I also had my heros that I looked up to when I was a kid and when I was in high school.
While most kids had comic book heros like Super Man or Bat Man, etc. etc. my heros were historic figures. I was always interested in Astronomy, so I looked up to such great men as Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Isaak Newton, Einstein, etc. etc.
I was a rebellious kid, not in a delinquent sort of way, but in my way of thinking.
As a kid, I went to church and Sunday school, but I could not buy all the bullshit that I was being taught in Sunday school. I once had a disagreement with my Sunday school teacher concerning how old the Earth is and I got slapped in the face and made to sit in a corner. When I came home and told my mother about it, she said that I didn't have to go to Sunday school anymore, as long as I was a good kid and believed in God that was all that mattered.
So, as a rebellious kid, I looked up to Galileo as a role model because he introduced a new way of thinking about the universe and he was persecuted and prosecuted for it, and spent the remainder of his life under house arrest.
Yeah! He was a bad boy! And I was a bad boy!
But in a good sort of way. I didn't do anything illegal as a kid, I was just a nonconformist in my way of thinking, and that was all I needed to get me into trouble, just by thinking differently.
One of my favorite authors throughout the 1960s and 1970s was Isaak Asimov, and throughout the 1980s I added Carl Sagan after watching his series of thirteen programs Cosmos on PBS. So I also had two contemporary heros to look up to. Isaak Asimov and Carl Sagan.
This was during the Regan years when good ol' Ronald Bedtime For Bonzo Reagan was in the White House, and good ol' Reverend Jerry Fall-in-the-well and his Moron Majority was causing quit a stir in the NEWS.
On the NEWS broadcasts, they showed religious groups burning books and it was reminiscent of some of the films I had seen of Nazi Germany made back in the 1930s with scenes of book burnings. The only difference was that the films from the 1930s and 1940s were in black and white while the NEWS videos of the 80s were in living color!
Same type of bad scenes, just different people and different names and different times, but still, all just the same.
I remember having nightmares.
I did not sleep very well during the 1980s and I was angry and depressed most of the time. I would say that the anxiety contributed even more to my obesity, causing me to go up from 290 pounds to over 350 pounds during those years.
I hated President Reagan and I hated the Reverend Jerry Falwell.
Carl Sagan and his program series Cosmos could not have come at a better time. It was so refreshing to hear his voice, a strong voice for intellectual and academic freedom.
Now, both Isaak Asimov and Carl Sagan are gone. Carl Sagan died back in 1996 at the age of 62 and Isaak Asimov died 1992 at the age of only 72.
I don't hear any more really strong voices on TV speaking out for intellectual and academic freedom. Instead, all we hear are moronic celebrities, selling the latest diet or weight loss exercise gimmick that is no better than all earlier diets and weight loss exercise gimmicks. We only hear from the snake oil peddlers.
Back in April of 2007, some celebrity, Sheryl Crow, a self proclaimed environmentalist said we can all do our part to save the trees if we would use only one square of toilet paper during each restroom visit.
Now, who in the fucking Hell is this Sheryl Crow???
So, I did a Google search on her. It turns out she is a country western singer. No wonder I never heard of her! That's because I don't listen to redneck trailer trash music. She probably wipes herself with corn cobs!
Well, I have a suggestion for her.
I think this will help her to save the trees.
Just be sure to use just one square for each bathroom visit.
Then there is Me Me Roth, a self proclaimed Anti Obesity Crusader who advocates humiliating overweight children to get them to exercise more and to lose some weight.
YEAH RIGHT!!! Like, we all know how well that works!
Me Me Roth is a food hater. She hates food and she hates people who are overweight.
Here is her idea of a healthy diet.
If she had her way, she would outlaw meat, chicken or fish, and have us eating nothing but lettuce leaves and tofu!
I read in a recent article that tofu can cause dementia in older people, that soy products are actually bad for us, and if your going to use soy products, then, it should be fermented soy products instead.
Also, some more recent articles saying that pregnant women need to eat more fish because the Omega 3 fatty acids in fish is good for the brain and the heart. Also, it's been shown that children born to mothers who ate more fish while pregnant scored higher in IQ tests and did much better in school.
But we have these moronic celebrities telling us not to wipe ourselves when in the restroom and not to eat meat, chicken, or fish, and PETA wanting us to call fish "Sea Kittens" instead of fish.
So, as a society, were are becoming more and more anti-intellectual, anti-academic, and now, even anti-hygienic!
I really wish these moronic celebrities would just shut the fuck up!
Isaak Asimov, Carl Sagan, where are you when we need you?