I think it depends on the public school district. My public high school didn't really attempt to control the thoughts of its students because it went agaisnt the academic culture of the school. In really large public school districts, thought control is impossible on practical grounds. Its in the smaller but less academic public school districts that you get thought control.

The tree of libery must be occasionally be watered with the blood of kindergarteners. (Sarcasm).

Would romantic anachronist be a good term?

Until the late 19th and early 20th century, you needed to know the Classics and Greek and Latin if you wanted to be considered educated in the Western context. The United States was probably the first Western country to severe the Classics from education.

The repetitive element was kind of annoying but at least Eddings was clever enough to create a plot point for it. What I liked about the Malloreon was it showed how the characters changed, thought hard about how even the death of the Big Bad is not going to lead to utopia, and it really fleshed out the compexities in the Angaraks, whom I always felt sympathetic for.

The Malloreon isn't that bad. I liked reading about Garion as an adult.

A thousand years ago was 1013. This was still before the Crusades started and Europe was a violent place. The people on top were knights prepared to use violence. Smart people were in the background. It wasn't till the 1200s that we really got to be in charge.

It's what kids do when they use their teddy beat for therapy.

Hipsters don't have good fashion sense?

I know. I was trying to come up with manly jobs or at least jobs with a machismo culture that require higher education. Law, fimance, computer programming, engineering, and even accountancy have macho cultures.

They could study history or economics than go to law school or work for a few years and go back for an MBA. Law, for all its problems, and MBAs are manly. They could just man up and realize a college degree of some sorts is necessary these days and study computer programming.

I also think that a lot of men are under the impression that if they seem overly educated, it would hurt their romantic and sexual prospects.

The only non-fictional person who can get away with a bow-tie is Churchill.

I think one of the worst aspects of our Constitution was the high bar set to amend it. It really could have been a lot lower.

The problem is that we really can't reform campaign finance in our country without Amending the Constitution since a lot of political spending is protecting by the First Amendment according to the Supreme Court. Good luck with that.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HigherEducationIsForWomen

In many working class families, there is an implication that higher education is feminine or if not feminine at least effeminate. A lot of working-class men probably do not want to go to college because they think the manly think to do is work right away or that the type of job college will lead to is entirely unmanly. When you add the old stereotype of male intellectuals as eggheads, you'd see why people with a certain investment in a certain form of masculinity avoid college.

Now we educated types know this bulk. Business people, doctors, lawyers, and computer programers are all capable of being very machismo. All of these careers require a lot of education.

There are long-ties for tuxedos. Men no longer have to wear a bow tie again, unless they are in full tails and white tie. Bow ties always pissed me off for some reason. The only person who get get away with them is Churchill.

What about lions and and tiger and bears? Oh my.

Wouldn't Aristotle himself be fine with the notion that philsophy had to change with the times? It was Plato who argued for eternal truths, Aristotle was the one who introduced the idea of subjectivity into philosophy.

American education never really had a strong classics tradition. Mastering Latin and Greek and their associated works was part of the European education tradition since the Middle Ages. During the 19th century, the Classics were stil the cornerstone of elite European education and the what the best and brightest studied during their adolescence before university. I have European friends who went to gymansium where they studies Latin, Greek, and the classics. This tradition was never incorporated into the American education system. I think thats why we have a lot of debates on whether or not kid's should learn the classics today.

The advocates of class-based affirmative action believe that its way too help African-Americans and people of color without causing bitter feelings among whites. The logic seems to be that since people of color are disproportionately poor than many of them will be included in a class-based affirmative action scheme but that white people won't feel bitter because white people will be helped as well.

The problems with this is that not all people of color are poor and middle to upper class people of color are often still victims of racism. They need the same legislation to help them that poor people of color do. Its also entirely possible that fewer people of color would be helped by a class-based affirmative action because the numbers of poor whites out way them.

Affirmative action, for all its faults, is really the only way to deal with the legacy of anti-Black racism in the country. Some people argue for a class-based affirmative action as an alternative but I think a class-based affirmative action is going to disproportionally benefit poor white people over African-Americans.

Sorry, I'm just not seeing it. I've encountered too many incidents on the internet and in real life of people waiving away Jew-hatred and not taking it with a modicum of serious because Jews are "white and privileged." These are people who are absolutely sensitive to all the problems of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. When it comes to Jew-hatred, their absolutely horrible and blind.

I realize that this is a very loaded topic but I'm really pissed when people refer to Jews as white. In the American context, we are considered to be white and privileged but this really gets to me. Its away of dodging the legacy of thousands of years of Jew-hatred. During the 20th century alone, we have been exposed to Jim Crow like quotas and exclusion, race riots (pogroms) in numerous countries, property confiscation, expulsions that were official and unofficial in nature, and of course one of the most elaborately planned genocides of all time. Lets not get into the previous centuries or the current problems faced by Jews today.

Calling Jews white is simply away to avoid all this and to deny us justice. It is the ultimate dodge. It is evil.

Bankruptcy practically requires flat-fees in order to ensure that the bankruptcy lawyer gets paid. Its one of the few areas in law where flat-fees make sense.

In colonial times, America distinguished between solictors and barristers just like England did. We got rid of the distinction after the American Revolution because it seemed a bit feudal and archaic.

The hardest part about fee for services is creating a menu of services offered and the amount charged for each service. Every client needs to be charged the same fee for the same service. In form heavy work like patent law, trademark or immigration its not so hard. When dealing with other matters its kind of trickier. How much is a trial worth?

I'm not a big fan of flat-fees. They punish the clients that actively work with you to help them go through their case by making them pay just as much as the less active clients. In immigration, this could slow down things quite a bit. Its probably similar in other fields. As you pointed out, you don't know how complicated a case could get. Something that seems relatively simple could turn really complicated, really fast and your left doing a lot of work for nothing at a certain point.

The real virture of the fee for service system is that it helps keep hours saner for everyboy from partners to associates. When you charge per hour than the incentive is too charge as many hours as possible as you pointed out previously. Associates are miserable because of the long hours they have to put in doing tasks that are often mind-numblingly boring and are just being done to generate more revenue. This angers clietns because their bills keep mounting. The client complain to the partners, who are miserable because they have to calm the clients while still trying to bill them as much as possible.

If you charge per service than there is a certain incentive to perform as many services as possible for a client but these are going to be somewhat harder to justify than x amount of hours because a client is more prone to question why that thing needed to be done. Also, the amount of time devoted to fulfilling the service is irrelevant as long as its done. This might create incentives for saner hours, which would make many associates very happy.