the Illiterate
and Innumerate

I want all three halves of that pie!

Here we are approaching the halfway point in 2014 and this will be my first post since last December. It's partly because I've been trying to get other stuff done, be outside more and frankly I just grew tired of thinking about the same old crap continually coming around on the guitar, with the state of politics and the world in general just seeming to accelerate its rush to Hell in a Handbasket.

It would seem I'm not alone in this withdrawal from the blogosphere as some of my favorites like the Mound of Sound at the the Disaffected Lib or the always engaging fellow at the Sixth Estate have also either retired from active blogging or are at least taking a break. Heckfire (as RossK might say) even the self-proclaimed "King of Bloggers" has mysteriously disappeared from cyberspace, supposedly to build a new website (hopefully with the John Coltrane version of My Favorite Things this time) which I'm confident his followers both real and imaginary will expect to be Rolls-Royce quality, because it just doesn't take months and months to build a website, unless of course one doesn't know how.

Actually, I get depressed just reading the news, much less actually thinking about it and writing something about it. I mean, how many times does one need to hear idiotic ReThuglicans scream Benghazi, Bengazhi or listen to the idiocy of the furrin' born presidential aspirant Ted Cruz open his mouth and prove how dumb he is, while wondering how he ever got through university. I even want to kick my own ass when I hear the crap that comes out of John Kerry's mouth these days and recall that I voted for him and his adultrous VP p(r)ick in 2004 - of course the option was Dubya Bu$h and his baby sitter Deadly DickHead Cheney. Then I hear that 2016 might be Jeb Bush agin' Hillary Clinton and wonder when in the hell the U.S. became some kind of Kingdom ruled by two families. By the way Mr. Boner (the leader of the House) and Marvelous Marco Rubio, you don't have to tell me that you aren't scientists, yet are experts in issues regarding climate change and women's reproductive issues.

Then I get even stoopider and turn on the TeeVee and there's John MacAnus, the man who destroyed more U.S. planes than the Viet Cong and thought Caribou Barbie Palin was qualified to be one heartbeat away from the oval office yet again seemingly on EVERY Sunday morning talk show making up shit. I must admit though I do miss his girlfriend Lindsey Graham, ole Opie is at least always good for a laugh.

Here at home, Christy and HER FAMILY are still first and with her friends won't quit ripping off the province of B.C. until there is nothing worth stealing left. And the man with the weird looking hair is still befouling 24 Sussex although I dream of him being perp walked out of there in cuffs....but then the Royal Conservative Mounted Police are his honor guard, more and more like Adolf's SS and looking like soldiers from the Empire in Starwars more each day as conditions deteriorate and leaders more and more look to the police or military to protect them from the people they are supposed to serve.

This week for some undoubtably masochistic reason I actually bought and read two or three dead tree versions of the Vancouver Stun.  It is common and accepted knowledge that the news media of all kinds have gone so far downhill they would have to dig upward for days to reach the Dead Sea. They try to blame it on technological change but the fact is they are pushing propaganda and outright garbage and people have little use for garbage, unless it is organic and can be turned into compost, or can be recycled. Of course newspapers can be recycled, but one only needs so much kitty box liner, fish wrap or firestarter. 

I are eating!

Now I come to the reason for the title above for this post. Actually one of the papers I bought at the grocery store because there was a Pete McMartin column starting on the lower half of page one about the confrontation going on between the anti-intellectual Christy Clark (who never found a college she couldn't drop out of) and the teachers.  As per usual he feels obligated to pitch the dispute as equally the fault of both sides with the poor students and their parents as the victims. The fact that the BC Supreme Court has ruled against the crap Christy started in 2002 TWICE, yet she and her minions just either appeal (on our dime of course) or rewrite the same illegal crap in different words, an exercise that has now gone on for a dozen years. Christy, Gordo and Stephen all share a complete lack of respect for the law, or at least as it applies to them (it doesn't, apparently).

Anyhow, after telling how wonderful his educational experience was, in spite of having to take grade 13 twice, this professional (sic) writer comes out with this gem.

News flash, teachers, I don't know many in our modern economy who doesn't work hard......

Leaving out the ornamentation and getting down to the nuts and bolts or nouns and verbs we come up with "I don't know many.....who doesn't........." or a classic example of a pronoun and verb that disagree. I mean, we could have I don't know many who don't, or I don't know one who doesn't, but either he or his editor do a good job of mangling.  I make mistakes myself, hell, I made one a couple years ago, but then I'm not a pro, I don't get paid and I don't have an editor.

Then there is our man in politics, Andrew Coyne who in an article titled - "Bad Math shouldn't discredit policy," goes on to explain how Tim Whodat's million jobs plan that starts by firing 100,000 people is "
one-half wishful thinking, one half double counting" (actually multiplying by eight) and one half bad math. In other words Timmy the Tool's plan actually has Three Halves.......when I went to school, before the new math, we called those thirds.

   The disturbing part is that these faux-pas weren't committed by the poorly educated, poorly paid and inexperienced new journalists, but long time senior commentators.  Oh well, I guess I understood what they were both trying to say, not that I agree necessarily, but I find it jarring and know my English teacher in High School, much less university would have downgraded me for the one and I would not do very well in my math class if I divided anything into three halves.

BTW, the title of the McMartin piece is "The only victim in the war of the classroom." I refuse to link to anything behing PostMedia's paywall, but you are welcome to google either one.