I started as a volunteer tutor for 826 a few years ago and now I intern there twice a week! It is incredible! I have yet to meet Mr. Eggers, though. One day...
It's a sad world when I want to say "that should be the parent's job", but I have to stay silent because the reality is that a lot of parents just aren't there for their kids. Well done Mr. Speaker. You make the soft-hearted pirates proud.
I see myself pretty much living as close to nature as I can get in Iowa. I live a few seconds away from a large park and go there frequently to just bike around and enjoy it. Besides that, its also amazing to see Pelicans swarm a place called Sailorville lake. Deers have actually adapted to humans, and I don't get that out of a natgeo magazine. They don't run away when they see a car, they let it pass then cross. They dine on the left over corn cobs that are dropped for food in the winter.
Fabulous idea! I do not trust the public school system (or even private schools) to give my kids the tools to be competitive with the rest of the world. Furthermore, I've always felt like 12 grades is FAR to many. Back in the day, they sent kids to college at around 15 years old. There is no reason why a 15 year old wouldn't be able to go to college if they had proper attention like this.
We also know that we put a gigantic strain on the environment with our agricultural based economy. Thats why companies like pioneer and Universities like ISU place such a strain on hybrid crops and more effeciant fertilizers (which are the major pollutant btw, not pesticides).
Very rarely is there a plant these days that has naturaly developed and is a better candidate for farming (corn for example, has always been cultivated by humans, and it was developed from a plant called maize.) Those are our options. By cultivating a highly succesful plant that is tailor-made for an environment, we use less fertalizers because there is no need to. We also use less pesticides because the plant may have a natural resistance to them, or is hardy enough it can survive a bug raid.
You misunderstood me. By saying we are organic means we have preferences. I was going to add that if we didn't raise cows for food, unless it was a place like India, they would become endangered because of the fact that they are large, rather slow moving animals and basicly they would be like a large deer in the roads if we let them run free, and having a wild life reserve for a cow would be kind of, weird honestly. I understand the importance of the organic movement, (cont.)
as for Genetic engineering and concerns, its either this, or we till the world with cornfields. Most of Iowa is crop land, and it killed the praries that used to dominate it. As for the buffalo, your weighing on that comment a little to seriously, I know that Yellowstone Park is a place of preservation, and it is a sight seeing place. We are not supposed to dominate them, but the point I was making was the fact that you could not have that happen in "the wild" outside of Yellowstone.
If the financial crisis teaches us anything, isn't it that we ALL need more financial education? Seems the importance of increasing financial literacy and intelligence is now completely illuminated... not only for our government and business leaders, but for ourselves and our children. If you are in debt, it's time to learn how to get out of debt ASAP. Let me teach you what we should have learned in school about credit, debt and saving money. Free for a limited time.
I'm not trying to find a magic bullet, just simply stating what is at hand. Right now, I live in an environment that one could say is over farmed. Pesticides and fertalizers harm the land, Pig crap infects the rivers. What we need is a way to maintain crop production, but use less land and resources. We do this by either finding a high yield plant that is very stubborn (which is rare) or we make our own through artificial selection or bio-engineering. (cont.)
Awesome project for the USA. Unfortunately, in other countries, schools keep to themselves and wait for government funding. Teachers have no room for iniative and gain more money by working in tutoring centers than in schools. Companies have a better chance of connecting with schools through major business deals with the government than by trying to reach them directly.
bio-engineered humans is a cool idea to me. I get my idea on cows from their central american cousin, the Buffalo. Even in Yellowstone, they stop traffic as they cross roads. I feel weve abused our enviroment, just like you've said, and I agree with certain aspects of both groups, but I do not agree with how pro-organic people wish to maintain the environment. Iowa is the changing world by the way, were on the forefront of wind tech, and were fairly liberal for a mostly rural state (cont.)
Nature isn't a sideshow, it isn't the buffalo pens that the park has to show a beast who used to be king of the area I now live in. Nature is the very basis of an human life, and living in a rural climate, you understand it very well. Nature is also practicality, its ok for buffalo to stop traffic in yellowstone park, but the human race is going to fast to stop for them if they were released anywhere else, and it would hurt both parties. Cont.
(Read from my post 3 down first, they organize these replies weird). Also, in developed countries that are nearing population overload, engineered crops help produce more with less resources, less space, and less time. That is why I think the organic movement is very naive, and hippies are naive as well.
Most people where i live hate britney. I guess i should have defined my explanation a little better. I live in Iowa, People don't listen to Britney, they test higher in terms of education, and we often despise the "idiots" of society.
Your assuming things, I take the wild as co-inhabitants. I have lived in the same area for all my life, and I start to know the pattern of things, and the regulars. If I treated wildlife as pets, then I would be treating my friends as pets, in that I treat both with the social functions and material functions attributed with them. With my friends, I talk, I interact, but with wild life i try to have as little interference as possible simply because that is their need I try not to be the enemy
and I know that Iowa has the worst water in the country because of pesticides. However, I also know that bio-engineering food stuffs has helped millions of people in the way it helps plants adapt to the environments or perform better as a crop. The organic movement is fairly negative towards this technology, saying that natural is better and makes people live healthier, but really it doesn't matter what rice you grow in Africa, as long as you have something to eat is what counts. (Cont.)
Corporations use this because it works Farmers use this because they are poor as hell and rely on government subsidies and effeciancy to make a profit. Hell Iowa State University uses and researches it because its one of the few options we have Eventually, maybe we may be able to engineer our bodies to take in raw nutrients (well still have to receive a large amount proteins from plants) but until then, our only way of managing our food and making our demands have less impact is in this process
Make a law: If you tutor children, you get 20$ pr student pr/hr. Must comply with a protocol for proper care, give proof of your experience and document the actual tutoring or else face sanctions. Can get experienced teachers through tapping reserves at colleges and universities. Sophomores could easily teach secondary school physics in a lab that's not being used. Teachers could teach people how to teach. If documentation proves troublesome, it boil's down to finding locales at every turn.
To me, Hippies are people who follow cliches about helping society, and love the earth but do little for it. For example, many people in Green Peace arn't hippies to me, although I don't agree with their methods (to me, many of them are insain). However, Peta is (on certain issues like their stand against meat and how many of them are vegetarians). I feel they are kind of naive on their stance due to the fact that we are still organic beings (and other reasons).
i tried to read a heartbreaking work of staggering genius many years ago when i lived in san francisco, back when eggers and chabon were quickly becoming it boys of the literary world. maybe my brain is too laid back for eggers wriring style, but he was like the energizer bunny on overdrive. he just seem like he was always trying to find ways to top himself and to show the reader, " look at how brilliant, witty and smart i am !" i gave up after 100 pages; he just seemed too narccistic and arrogant for his own good... just tell a good story, thats what i want.just because you were nomintated for pulitzer, that doesnt make you god's gift to literature
