LikeTheDew - Latest Comments

Re: The Grim Joker

Hannah — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 02:52:51 -0000

Ah, comics I can "get." Thanks.

Re: Time for Some Good News: Tick Season is Ending

Jamish11 — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:40:49 -0000

"South Africa is tick paradise and virtually every tick species known to man is found there. Not only is there an abundance of ticks, but also a multitude of very lethal tick borne diseases too numerous to mention. The tick population in cattle is so bad that they have to be dipped or sprayed weekly during the rainy summer months. Lyme disease is not found in South Africa but Rock Mountain Spotted Fever is."
Weird how many people staying in South Africa got bitten here and have Lyme Disease...... How can you say that Lyme disease is not found in South Africa, when so many people are suffering from this disease :/

Please go have a look at the following pages in Facebook, so that you can just see how many people in South Africa is actually suffering.

1. lymedisease.co.za
2. Lyme SouthAfrica
3. Lyme Disease, Ricketssia and Q Fever in South Africa

Re: Why is SC So Stupid About Education and Technology?

WeFight — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:45:39 -0000

WE NEED QUALITY EDUCATION NOT IDEOLOGY!
by Stephen Paul Delsol. December 6, 2011

In 2006, I held a meeting with the State's deputy superintendent and her assistants at the State house. The purpose of the meeting was to alert the superintendent of the low math and science scores of students in the 4th and 8th grade. I had analyzed the PACT scores. I pointed out that the math and science scores were too low, and that our elementary and middle school students would be unable to compete successfully for STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) based jobs in the future. It was reported this year that 81,000 STEM jobs will be created in South Carolina by 2018. These are high paying jobs that require an Associate, Master's and PhD degrees.

I have said all this to say, that between October 2010, and October 2011, only 15,000 new jobs were created in South Carolina. The majority of these jobs were government, health care, retail, leisure and hospitality type jobs. These are mostly low paying service type jobs. Of these jobs 5,500 were created in Columbia, 4,700 in Greenville, Anderson and Spartanburg, 2,900 in Myrtle Beach/Conway, and 2,700 in Charleston.

Right now, we need to educate our students to be excellent at math, chemistry, physics, biology, computer science, engineering and technology. These subjects cannot be done on the cheap.
We need money to update science laboratories, and engineering workshops in schools and colleges. At the moment, the state is not ideologically willing to invest in education, but would rather spend its budget surplus on lowering Corporation tax.

Irrespective of our ideology, South Carolina GOP politicians just cannot afford to play politics with the quality of education of our children. That's fatal! All our students need a quality education. Quality costs money. If the federal government is making money available to us to improve the quality of education of our students, we must take it and use it wisely.
Already, we have to import STEM skills from overseas to fill in jobs that our students are not educated to do.

How long are we willing to use our ideology to block, frustrate, and deny our students the quality of education that they need and deserve?

Stephen Paul Delsol is an Education Consultant and Academic Coach
He can be contacted at his Email Address: SPDelsol@gmail.com

Re: Stranger Than Strange Swamps

Tompol — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:40:14 -0000

Thanks ... seems topics like these don't generate much attention. I should have added politics into the piece ... maybe how some DC power broker wants to turn all swamps (wetlands) into fossil fuel centers.

Re: A Time To Heal

Whitney — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:13:19 -0000

If your review is only two words, then leave it at that. Don't say, "Two-word review of Jonathan Odell’s new novel The Healing: What audacity." and then critique the work on and on and on.. just more blather...

Re: Why is SC So Stupid About Education and Technology?

Hannah — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 09:58:56 -0000

I think the answer to your question lies in the fact that some humans delight in manipulating their environment and some human delight in manipulating other humans. Perhaps the latter do that because they are practically incompetent--all thumbs as we used to say. Maybe they just don't learn how to manipulate the environment because we structured our system of education around them having to learn to read and write, first. So, no information for you unless you know how to read and write, even if you can't hold a pencil or pen to save yourself. The computer key board is a god-send to such a person. I expect that the iphone with its thumb-activated key-pad is a god-send to someone who's all thumbs.
"The right tool for the job" should probably be amended to take the capabilities of the human hand into account.
I have three children. All of them were slow to read and write. All of them went into math. All of them gravitated towards using computers. None of them use computers to email, unless they have to. None of them like to write. Neither of their parents were equipped to make them competent. We needed the schools to do that.
Putting people who just want to manipulate other people in charge of our schools is a bad idea.

Re: A Time To Heal

Hannah — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 09:33:24 -0000

Looking at things from different perspectives is what binary people, directed by their superficial optics, simply aren't equipped to do.
The question is why are these disabled or incompetent people permitted to get away with imposing their point of view. I think the answer is because they are so insistent and the reason they are so insistent is because they are incompetent--unable to provide for themselves, if they can't persuade or coerce others to do for them. Desperation is what drives them.
I mean, look at what the Republicans are running for President. Do any of those characters look like they even know how to fix lunch?
"Audacity" is a good word for someone who can identify with people who do things. People who don't do, have to resort to hype.
Me, I've been thinking I ought to be doing something other than writing. Looks like getting Mr. Odell's book would be something worth while. Thanks for the recommend.

Re: Stranger Than Strange Swamps

Hannah — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 09:09:01 -0000

Just trying to keep the conversation going. :)

Re: Where were the bishops when Troy Davis died?

Lee Leslie — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 08:12:17 -0000

It seems a simple reality: contraception is about women; capital punishment is a white guy issue; Troy Davis was black.

Re: Why is SC So Stupid About Education and Technology?

Lee Leslie — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 08:07:55 -0000

Way to go, Phil. You are so right on this critical issue. There is something magical how a computer screen draws the focus of even the most attention deprived among us. There is also something so arcane about teaching from text books to this generation and making them lug 40 lb. backpacks from class to class. I presume the text book industry lobbies hard to keep our schools 40 years behind, but why don't they just ask a child.

Re: Manage Subscriptions

Lee Leslie — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 07:58:46 -0000

Just wanted to report that this has been fixed and tests out. Sorry for the problem.

Re: Stranger Than Strange Swamps

Tom Poland — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 10:04:30 -0000

Hey I'm trying to get my correct identity here ... my earlier comment came across as my "sports talk" handle.

Re: Stranger Than Strange Swamps

Resident_Georgia_Fan — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:37:05 -0000

A botanist discounts the breathing aspect of knees. They have no leaves. Knees can be found for trees growing in dry ground as well. He believes the knees anchor the tree in the uncertain bottoms soils of swamps. One reason we have beach erosion today is because we have built damns across all the major rivers thereby cutting off a major long-term flow of sediments and sands to the coast. We also have marshy swamps devoid of trees. I find them all beautiful and strange. Scientists have a hard time agreeing on just how barrier islands form though several theories generally find acceptance. As always thanks for your comments.

Re: Can You Teach Old Dogs …

Mikew3000 — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 07:20:05 -0000

My admiration for your commitment only grows.....

Re: The Middle Class Wins in Congress

Hannah — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 06:44:36 -0000

The Republican mantra that government should stay out of business isn't disingenuous, it's downright deceptive. What they really want is that government should stay out when they're not in charge and not able to dole out goodies to the cronies, who help keep them in office. All their talk of tax cuts is just a euphemism for bribing private corporations to squeeze their workers for votes. Inflated military contracts are the pay-off.
Why are Republican office holders so intent on keeping their "jobs"? Mostly because they're not good at doing anything other than talking. If they can't order people around, who's going to get them lunch?

Re: You don’t own me

Hannah — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 06:31:00 -0000

I'm tempted to think some people just can't tell the difference between "own" and "owe." That would explain their aversion to the very idea of owing anyone anything. If they even recognize social obligations, they're something that's satisfied with a calling card.

Also, and this is perhaps more to the point, there are people for whom there is no history. Nothing WAS lost because the WAR is still on-going. Such people exist in an ineffable present. It's what Clinton referred to when he asserted "it all depends on what the meaning of is is."

Time as a linear progression of events is not a universal perception. "Not change we can believe in" is an assertion that change is not believed--at least not in any permanent sense. Ergo "climate change" is not believed.

Re: Stranger Than Strange Swamps

Hannah — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 06:05:06 -0000

A swamp is a wet place with trees growing in it. Cypress have knees so the roots can get oxygen, since the soil under water tends to be oxygen deprived. A wetland without trees is a marsh or prairie.
It's likely that a long time ago, perhaps before the glaciers covered much of New England, the ocean's edge was much further inland. That would account for the sand hills situated fifteen or twenty or more miles from the shore.
Ocean currents build up islands on which shrubby trees and grasses take root even as the daily tides scour out ponds. If man doesn't destroy them, the sand dunes just keep getting higher and higher because the wind blows the sand and the vegetation catches it. The dunes by our beach have accreted at least two feet in the 18 years I've lived here.
We read about the oceans getting higher, but we don't read much about land being built up, even though that's how where New Orleans sits came to be.
It's actually quite interesting. While, in Georgia, the granite mountains are eroding and being carried to the ocean, clay from somewhere is also being washed down and deposited in unsightly black clumps on our beach. What's been happening recently is that the clay has spread into layers which, when they get covered by sand, become rather impervious. Clay makes an impervious layer. That's why they use it to "line" waste disposal sites. But, it only works as long as it's not in direct contact with water, because water dissolves it. So, to make clay impervious it has to be covered with sand. And that, I think, is how our "barrier islands" are made.

Re: Will the Real Journalist Stand Up

Hannah — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 08:35:57 -0000

I think the difference lies in whether people like to see what they get or hear it for themselves. For some people, "seeing is believing;" others have to hear it "from the horse's mouth." Whether people are visual or aural makes all the difference. Moreover, TV news is mostly aural. The visuals are a throw-away, unless there's a live event being streamed. People don't watch TV for the pictures.
Newspapers are totally visual and tactile. Which may be one of their advantages that's being captured by the iPad.
The pathways of information are different for people who like to read and people who like to hear themselves and other people talk.
35% of American adults are functionally illiterate. They probably don't like to read.

What percentage of the OWS success should be assigned, do you think, to the mic check and synchronized speaking?

Re: Alabamification of America, Take 2

Kathy — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 09:15:53 -0000

The title alone is worth posting widely. Thank you.

Re: Alabamification of America, Take 2

Hannah — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 07:53:38 -0000

The impulse to segregate is incredibly strong. I think it's because it's instinct-driven and may be the only way some people perceive their world--as made up of groups that are dangerous and need to be kept in their place. And women is one of them.
Of course, women in the aggregate are dangerous. They are the givers of life and have the power to withhold it. For people who don't think of time as having a progressive, linear direction, the power to withhold life, even if obviously not exercised (in the case of a living person), may represent a continuing threat. "Momma could have made a choice (choice is bad) and then I wouldn't be here."
See, people who exist in the present tense, don't distinguish between what is and what might have been. It's bad enough the child was weaned. For some people, the past is present as if it were today.

Re: The Seduction of Convention

Hannah — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 07:31:20 -0000

Well, I'm increasingly inclined to think there are two types of humans, competents and incompetents. Being practically incompetent means the latter's survival is tenuous. They can either steal what they need or persuade someone to give it to them. The latter can be identified by their gift of gab. The reasons they use to persuade the doers to hand some of their surplus over vary. Some propound some higher authority dispensing favors in the hereafter as justification. Others cite the threat of theft if there's not a voluntary surrender. It's the latter which is manifest in the finger pointing at red or yellow hordes.
It used to be said, "those who can, do; those who can't, teach," rather unfairly, I think. Skills have to be taught. Humans don't just pick them up. But, the saying would seem to be accurate, if we replaced "teach" with preach and/or pontificate.
I think the original idea in setting up the Constitutional structure was to have practical people take turns administering and representing. The development of professional politicians who spend decades pontificating is not a good one, whether or not it was intended. Even worse, however, is the proliferation of incompetents in the halls of government. Since they have no practical talents (some can't even read, much less write their own speeches), all of their energies go into manipulating someone into doing the bidding of people who "know not what they do."
We should, as Jesus advised, forgive them. But, we should also make sure that, while we keep them, we don't let them decide what needs to be done by whom, when and how.
And we shouldn't let them pass laws at which they can then scoff.

That's my term for the day, "scofflaw lawmakers." Scofflaw makers pass laws at which they can scoff and which they never expect to be enforced. Why? Because they are people who expect nothing. Remember "nobody could expect" Condi? Incompetents do not expect. Perhaps that's how we can identify them.

Re: Privatizing America for Kings David and Charles Koch

Hannah — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 06:53:14 -0000

No Democracy is not the target of elimination, as long as it's just a mechanism for selecting the rulers of a rotating dictatorship. The target is what some people, whom I've decided to refer to as Randians, call populism--i.e. popular government or government by the people. That's why everything public is in foul odor with them. Private, in their binary thinking, is just the opposite of public--secret, instead of out in the open. Randians have to do things in secret because their agenda is unpleasant and would be strongly resisted if it were known. Human husbandry, which exploits people as if they were cattle has little to recommend it when stated bluntly. Behind the veil of money and disguised by the profit motive, it has a better chance of success until its victims start talking and sharing their experience. Then you get OWS.
The Koch enterprise is bound to fail because it is predicated on monopoly conditions and the use of force to gain compliance. That's an antiquated model which doesn't work in an electronically connected world. It doesn't even work in orally connected cultures like Iraq and Afghanistan and, presumably, Iran. Communities of consensus cannot be managed by punitive dictators.
The Koch brothers have to manipulate people because, despite their training, they really don't know how to do anything. It is our misfortune that for several decades university MBA programs have been doing nothing but turning out manipulators and propagandists, convinced that putting the screws to workers is the road to success.
Wonder why we don't have more discussion of the evidence that the reason the economy collapsed was because it was mismanaged by people who thought driving the workforce like cattle was all they needed to do. It wasn't entirely the fault of the banksters and speculators. They just pulled the plug on the failures. The lesson of the Red Coats keeps getting lost.

Re: Home grown tomatoes

Tom — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 06:23:21 -0000

The lyrics are from the song, "Homegrown Tomatoes," by Guy Clark. Not long ago, I saw the same quote incorporated into some artwork--without attribution--and when my wife commented on the quote, the artist said it was from a John Denver song--well, Denver did cover it but Guy Clark wrote it. By the way, the song appears on Guy's album (uh, CD) Better Days. Enjoy--the music and the to-mot-toes.

Re: I must have missed the meeting

Lee Leslie — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:59:04 -0000

Points so well made. I love to think their mom's or wives or sisters or daughters would explain all this to them. I'd lobby for Viagra to be taken off the approved list.

Re: The Surprising Connection Between Police Brutality and Steroid Use

Hannah — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:58:32 -0000

It occurred to me today that our instinct-driven legislators keep passing onerous legislation because it's the thing to do. Making laws is their job and besides, since they themselves never bother to follow laws, they really don't expect the ones they pass to be enforced. Indeed, it may be that there's a general sense that "no-one expects." Not only could no-one expect the terrorists attack, but expectation is not part of the Randian agenda. Perhaps they even preempt so they don't have to expect.
You see how that works? People keep telling them what to do (because they do nothing on their own hook), so they turn around and, like parrots, tell others what to do. But, it means nothing. They don't expect there to be any consequence. If there is, it's magic (or Democrats getting done what they claim to want).