Ponderings of a Scientist

So I have a whole laundry list of things to write about and pretty much zero time so very briefly:

Linda Greenhouse - you go girl. She gave a speech at Harvard the other day and totally bad mouthed the war, tax law, etc. etc.  Tons of people are up in arms because she is a journalist and God-forbide she have an opinion; she’ll never be able to write unbiased again!

Military stretched too thin.  Most of us in the science, non-profit world hate the War on Terror because it has pretty much consumed all potential sources of federal funding for our programs.  However, I do not blame the military for needing the money, rather I blame G.W. for fighting too many wars with an effective taxation level of 15% on the wealthy (as compared to 50%, as it used to be).  The miliarity doesn’t have enough money to operate safety and effectively and as such the leaders at the Pentagon are refusing to submit a budget for next year (2007 or 2008, I’m not sure).  Essential G.W. said - I grant you X billions of dollars formulate a financial plan and the generals said - we can not possibly stick to that budget so we refuse to set ourselves up to take the blame.  We will not put our butts on the line with Congresss, give us more money or else we do nothing!

Manchester Central High School has the most diverse student body in the state, speaking close to 50 languages.  However, because of no child left behind, english as a second language students can only be segregated for two years.  Then they must take traditional classes and pass grade 10 standardized test.  If they can’t pass, Central gets penalized.  On the top of it, it doesn’t seem like a bad plan, however when you are teaching immigrants from Somali tribes who have no written language or number system skills, essentially the literary skills of a US toddler, you can’t get them into standard grade 9 classes in 2 years!  But, this year, year 3 for many of these students, they are in regular freshmen classes.  They know they are not ready, their teachers know, but instead of serving these kids (as I thought public schools were supposed to do), they have to sit back and watch them fail out!

No time to proofread so deal!