Ellen's Nest

This Was Almost Priceless

This morning as I was reading the local paper I came across this little gem of an article. The article itself was of no consequence to me. It was the third paragraph that caught my attention. It made me smile. How much better can Cheney's ratings get?

Vice President Dick Cheney is scheduled to visit N@ples next month, the first Southwest Florida stopover for him since October 2004.

Cheney will appear at the N@ples Beach Hotel & Golf Club on March 6 as part of Victory 2006.

The vice president’s N@ples appearance will happen about a month after he shot an acquaintance, 78-year-old Republican lawyer Harry Whittington, while quail hunting in south Texas. Whittington was hit with birdshot in the face, neck and chest on a hunting trip on Feb. 11.

On Friday, Whittington, who later suffered a mild heart attack after a shotgun pellet traveled to his heart, was released from a Corpus Christi, Texas, hospital. Cheney has taken the blame for the accidental shooting.

Whittington Surprises Everyone And Heads Back To Work

Why Some Of Us Shouldn't Have Guns

News Flash!

Cheney caught poaching lawyer out of season.  No investigaton or charges filed, of course.

I Liked This

So, what's the big deal over James Frey?  I read his books, I liked them.  Do I ever take any books at face value?  No!  Who cares.   He wrote books and told a story.  He's an addict.  Addicts tell stories.  Get over it.

James Frey tries to explain to his wife that he was on a three-day bender with transvestite hookers

Thanks to my American Idle

Angry Thoughts?

What thoughts do you think are bumping around the empty walls of these two minds?  Listen while you think about it...

from: Watertiger

Mine Safety

Is still ignored.

 

Lady Slipper

Every year in the spring my friend, BA, and I use to walk in the woods on Cape Cod looking for these rare flowers.  They were only in one spot, and only survived for about a week.  I wonder if they are still there?

Leading The World In Innovation

In His State Of The Union Address, President Bush Announced The American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) To Encourage American Innovation And Strengthen Our Nation's Ability To Compete In The Global Economy. This ambitious strategy will increase Federal investment in critical research, ensure that the United States continues to lead the world in opportunity and innovation, and provide American children with a strong foundation in math and science. The American Competitiveness Initiative commits $5.9 billion in FY 2007, and more than $136 billion over 10 years, to increase investments in research and development (R&D), strengthen education, and encourage entrepreneurship and innovation

The president has no intention of spending $5.9 billion for children and teachers. "Two-thirds of the money, $4.6 billion" would not go to schools, but to cut taxes of corporations that invest in research and development. (More tax cuts to the rich, of course.)

That leaves $1.3 billion to retrain 70,000 existing teachers to math and science and to convert/train/whatever another 30,000 "scientists and engineers" — $13,000 apiece.

$13,000... Would you leave your scientist or engineering job to teach for that one shot bonus?  (Or is it spread out over 5 or 10 years?)  Believe me, for the education they get and are required to maintain, teachers are NOT well paid or held in high esteem like a scientist or engineer.  But, the total figure looks good, doesn't it?  I don't even want to get started.

I guess we'll know next week when he announces the budget distribution.

By the way, can someone interpret the two paragraphs below for me?  I must have missed the Reading lesson that day.  I understand the first sentence and kind of the last sentence of the first paragraph.  The second paragraph is a bit cloudy.:

"One of the other things we're going to do that makes sense is to have what we call a national math panel. Again, we made great progress in reading, and one of the reasons why is that we've -- there's a science to reading. I mean, it's not guesswork anymore. We've got a lot to really smart people, particularly out of NIH, that helped develop curriculum go-bys. We're not telling you what to use, but we are saying if you're interested in teaching every child to read, here are some things that are necessary to make it work. We want to do the same thing with the math curriculum so that every school district, if they so choose, has got a resource base in which to figure out what works.

Sometimes you have a good teacher sitting there, but they really don't understand what works when it teaches -- how to teach a child math. And we believe we can figure it out. I believe we have figured it out -- and now we'll make that available to school districts all around the country through the governors and the states."

Thank God they have really smart people, and I wonder just what child was left behind.