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This is the new banner for my site. Pass them around, in your siggys or something if you could please? I'd like to get some more traffic here.

Ohio School Funding

Earlier this month, one of my teachers showed our class a documentery done on the state of Ohio schools a few years ago. The movie contained scenese of schools that had been once condemed, housing an entier city's worth of students. The largest part of the problem is how we fund our schools. A funding system relying hevily on a local property tax value means that cities with no valuable jobs or low prperty vlaue, while paying the highest percentage for their school, end up with the least funding simply because there is no money there to give. If you click on the banner above this post, you will be taken to the ohiofairschools.org website, where you can find more information related to this in detail. They are holding an essay contest until the 31st of this month and for my class i prepared the following essay.

Ohio’s School Education Crisis

“All men are created equal.” These are the words in our Declaration of Independence. Why is it then that not all of our children receive an equal education? The funding of Ohio schools is calculated in such a way that as jobs and industry leaves the area, school funding falters, and children suffer.

As a student, I’ve been told all my life that I can do anything I want to when I grow up. I can be anyone I want to be. And growing up in a middle class family, that’s what I believed. Then I began my junior year at Wooster High School. I realized that if I wanted to be anyone or anything, I would have to work at it, so I did. Then I found that my school couldn’t offer me all the programs I required to excel in my aspired career path. And recently, I watched movie in Contemporary Issues class. This movie was unlike any I had seen before, in that it wasn’t some lecturer, and it wasn’t happening in some far away place. This movie was about the deplorable conditions of schools in Ohio, and it detailed how schools that were once condemned were reopened, students had no access to computers, or textbooks.

An equal education for all Americans is, if nothing else, the one thing we should guarantee our children. It is our children and the generations that come after us that will continue to shape our nation in all aspects, and if we allow our children to slip through the cracks in the floor, and miss out on an education, the future of our people, our nation, our great country, is in no way secure as a leading world power. If our children remain uneducated, not only will we suffer on a global scale, but also an uneven playing field is created where children are born into poor families that can’t afford to send their children to decent schools where they can revive an education that is competitive in society.

With an uneducated population, families that can only obtain minimum wage jobs in the service sector will have no choice but to turn to federal aid to provide housing and food. With so little money in the hands of the people, the federal budget will be strained to aid those that are below the poverty line. And when those service jobs become unobtainable and people are out of work, looting and riots may well ensue. These are not what if predictions and doomsday prophesies. One need only turn their eyes on the events leading up to the weeks of riots in France to see what an undereducated and unemployed social class is capable of when the chips are down.

“I want to be a doctor.” “I want to be an astronaut.” “I want to be a teacher when I grow up.” These statements can be found scribbled on paper in crayon on the walls of any grade school throughout the state. But if the way we fund our schools is not changed, not all, if any, of these children will even make it through high school.

This is in no way to be taken lightly. And you if even one person says that this doesnt really happen, go out to the Alliance City School District and look at their building. Go inside if you can and see the state it's in. Or the Canton City SD, or Masslion City SD. There are worse yet in the state. Write your congressman and local represenitive about these issues today.

Senators on Education Committee:
Joy Padgett Committee Chair : info
Gary Cates Vice Chair : info
John Carey : info
Randy Gardner : info
Jeff Jacobson : info
Larry A. Mumper : info
Teresa Fedor Ranking Minority Member : info
Eric D. Fingerhut : info
Ray Miller : info

Represenative Subcommittee:
Finance and Appropriations


Discusion:

*How would you rate your school? How much does your school spend per pupil?
*How else will a poor education effect the youth of the country and the country's future?
*What other ways can we fund our schools?


Citations:
Ohio House of Represenatives Committee Page

Ohio Senate Committees Page

Ohiofairschools.com

Children in America's Schools. Videocassette. South Carolina ETV

Slow week for me

Ok, no 'news' per say this week, but i do have this. I've changed the name of my blog to something that's not so much of a mouthful. "The Opinions of Taris". Hope you like it.


I saw an interesting address coem up when i was reviewing the hits to my blog. It would seem that the US Justice Dept is looking in on what i'm doing! :D

Click here to see

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A thermodynamics professor had writen a take home exam for his graduate students. It had one question:

"Is Hell exothermic(gives off heat) or endothermic(absorbs heat)?
Support your answer with a proof."

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law(gas cools off as it expands and heats up when it cools) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

"First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So, we need to know the rate souls are moving into Hell and the rate they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets into Hell, it will not leave. Therefor, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the diffrent religions that exist in the world today. Some of the religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since tehre are more then one of these religions and since people do not belong to more then one religion, we can project that all people and all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we can look at the rate of the volume in Hell because Boyle's LAw states taht in order for the tempature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand as souls are added.

This gives two possibillities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate then the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the tempature and pressure in Hell will increase untill all Hell breaks loose.

2. Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster then the increase of souls in Hell, then the tempature and pressure will drop untill Hell freezes over.

So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Ms. Therese Banyan during my Freshman year, 'That it will be a cold night in Hell before I sleep with you', and take into account the fact that I still have not succeded in having sexual relations with her, then 2 cannot be true, and so Hell is exothermic."

This student got the only A.
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A very entertaining peice shared with my chemestry class my our teacher.

That's all for this week. Leave some comments please!

Army with Dishoners

Army dishonors war hero

When it comes to heroes, former Arizona Cardinals NFL star Pat Tillman was right out of the movies. He gave up a $3.6 million contract to fight for his country after the 9/11 attacks. He did so, he stated publicly and often, for a reason: He wanted to defend the USA and all the values it represents. No Madison Avenue genius could invent a better boost for recruitment — and patriotism.

Until, that is, he was killed in Afghanistan in early 2004. Within hours, senior officers knew the truth: Tillman had been killed by "friendly fire." His own men mistook him for the enemy.

What to do? The honorable choice would have been to tell the truth. But for weeks, the Army spun the fiction that Tillman had died from Taliban fire as he bravely led his team.

It told this lie to Tillman's parents. It allowed a memorial service to go ahead without confessing. It maintained the fiction even as Tillman was posthumously awarded a Silver Star for bravery.

In doing so, the Army forgot that when such lies come out — as they often do — they cause immeasurably more damage than any truth could. Lives are needlessly damaged. Trust and credibility are lost.

That fact is now playing out, and painfully. Over the weekend, four Army reviews of Tillman's death were cast into doubt by the Pentagon's inspector general. He ordered the Army to conduct a criminal inquiry. Even so, Tillman's father, who bitterly contests the earlier findings, is understandably skeptical that the Army will get its fifth try right.

An accident of some sort is still the most likely explanation, and criminal charges are unlikely. Even so, the weakness of the Army's probes bears independent scrutiny. In difficult circumstances, the instinct of those in power is toward secrecy and cover-up. The Vietnam War and Watergate are instructive examples. So, too, are the actions of the Pentagon and Bush administration on issues from document classification to prisoner abuse to domestic spying.

Had the truth about Tillman been known right away, his parents and other mourners would have regarded him as no less of a hero. Most would still have believed fiercely in the things Tillman said he signed up for: his country, the armed forces and the values they represent.

If only the Army had acted as honorably. It has one last chance to get the story right.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-03-05-tillman-edit_x.htm

To be honest, this kind of thing has happened in every war, from our revolution to this war in iraq. When a poster boy dies, it sends the 'wrong' message to the people. Namely that our troops are dieing, and that war is, in fact, ugly.

Now i give you this question to ponder. "If the military lied about this, to the mans own family, what have they lied about to the population as a whole?"

(on a side note, i may be putting up a second artical this weekend. just a heads up :D)

Internet Censorship

Heh, big one for blogers here. This has been in the news alot, but there are a few questions i haven't heard asked, and i think hey are important in relation to America and our first amendment rights(freedom of speech, press, religion, peaceful assembly, petition for redress).

First, a mini history of recent events in this.
-Google and other major web hosting and search companies including Yahoo, MSN, and Microsoft have been aiding the Chinese government track down and censor Chinese citizens who speak out against the government. Those who are caught are often imprisoned for years at a time.

-Advocates for free speech have protested this. Questions have come up including "These are American companies, do the First amendment rights extend to them over seas?"

-Boycotts and protests have sprung up around the US protesting Google, who's motto is/was "Don't Be Evil" following the announcement of their new Chinese version of their search tool.

And now, My Issue:

"Are some of the blogs being censored by these companies for the Chinese Government hosted on servers in the United States?"

This is an upsetting question for me. If these web pages are in servers on US soil, then censoring them would be in direct violation of the first amendment. Some would say that the US government is censoring our media already, but that's another blog all together.

I've been unable too find much if any credible and specific data on this, so i don't have much to say about it. If anyone that reads this knows anything, a response would be greatly appreciated.

Discussion Topics:
- Should we support the Chinese Censorship of their citizens? Is it essential to their economy that they not be introduced to the ideas of Free Press and Free Speech?

- Do these large companies (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo) need to go to such un-ethical ends to make a profit? Is there a better way to go about this?