the ranting zone

physical education/health a class that is roiled into one in my state.
in my school you can be graded based on performance on physical examinations in a required class. to repeat this very important point: you can be denied a high school diploma because you are not capable of passing the benchmark of fitness. I get failing those that won’t try (kind of not really but that’s an argument for another time…) but do we want to fail the genus programers that might be in the realm of the physical unfit? I thought there was a understanding that academics is more important than athletics.
are we going to take away someones academic diploma for a failure at athletics. obviously because we’re doing it right now and it feels like I’m the only one that feels like it is deeply unethical
ps. sorry if this has many errors i wrote this in a hurry so didn’t proof read it.
pps. I only dedicated 5 mins to this post so… again sry for the post quality

First of all I have to admit that I have a bias in this topic. I am A high school student and my default position is obviously “school sucks”.
but to clarify: I understand that I need a high school diploma and some collage to not be in poverty. and while I have a dislike for homework i concede it’s necessity but grading is not. if i need to do homework to learn a problem and I don’t than I will fail a test. if I was taught with less overlap between years I would have completed all high-school benchmarks by the end of my freshmen year. having teens do random pointless assignments may help them learn but if they are capable of doing so without doing the homework than why should their grades suffer for it when it makes it so a less intelligent students more likely to pass? when it makes tests and exams less important? when it makes knowing the material less important than work ethic? i didn’t think that work ethic was what you were meant to learn in school…

I read about some new drivers license laws in the state of Michigan that are rather harsh and unnecessary. The new laws do not allow 16 and 17 year old drivers that have a level 2 license to drive between 10:00pm and 5:00 am and prohibits more than one passenger under the age of 21 from being in the car. Many know of the stereotypical “teen” drivers, the cars that have five or six of them in a car with radio on so loud the car shakes with the music and are generally a terror on the road.
All teens are not like this, you just don’t notice the responsible teens because they’re aren’t as noticeable as those causing problems. And most of the stereotypical teen drivers may not be teen at all.
There are just as many immature 21 year olds as 17 year olds and 21 year olds are probably more likely the drivers of those cars. I’m a little tired of teens’ reputation with adults as stupid and a danger to themselves and others. Experience begets maturity. Maturity begets responsibility.
New drivers aren’t dangerous because they are teens but because they are inexperienced and they won’t become experienced by these restrictions. We can’t remove all distractions for teens at some point they have to concentrate on their own. They need to make their own decisions, delaying that does nothing to help them make the decisions we would want them to make.

funny comic
I run to similar situations (without the whole alter thing) all the time.
People that i have known for multiple years and haven’t a clue what their names are. They tell me once and after that if I forget it it’s to awkward to ask. Some don’t even ever tell me, and expect me to know them.
Recently someone asked me if I knew their name i could only respond
“You never told me.”
After some consideration they realized that they hadn’t
Anyone have things like this happen to them?

To answer those have commented this to one of the two other posts and to those who might do so to one of my future posts i say “NO”.
And here’s why!
1.)if I am wrong (which I admit is a probability) i want the discussion of the flaws in what i have said to be visible to others.
2.) I don’t know how to pm any of you so if you ask me to pm you i wont be able to respond because i don’t know how.

it seems the quality of technology is decreasing all the time.
the best way to see this is to look at all the bugs that occur nowadays.
I have heard phrases like “there will always be bugs” to explain why a new devise (which is VERY expensive) is not working and how there is noting to be done about it. the problems of modern software as i see them are thus. the beta stage is to short and should be longer and any and all bugs should be caught in the beta. if there are bugs that is because the beta was not long enough.
layouts change to often. you shouldn’t have to relearn a software every time a new version comes out
freezing/crashing is acceptable and it should not be.
hardware (and the software stored on it) is far to delicate and needs to be able to be left out without damage.
software can have special graphic settings and in some cases make the user change them rather than changing them automatically.
i know some of the things on this list sound petty but there Severe annoyances that hamper usability.

when I see things like this
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/22044388 (link at bottom)
i cant help but be angry.
people are saying that the golden compass is an attack on religion
but so what if it is?
that’s free speech.
I have recently heard of a few schools near me pulling the golden compass off library shelves and not allowing children to do book reports about it.
yet while they leave religiously charged books like the chronicles of narnia alone completely!
on any controversial topic banning one side and not the other is almost taking sides yourself.
now we can ban all books that have any controversial material or we can let people think for themselves and expose them to material that is biased both ways. we can silence all opinions or none
which do you think is beater?