XPost: alt.politics.socialism, alt.politics.economics, alt.politics.media   
   From: efreem2@alumni.umbc.edu   
      
   Computer support staff jokes   
      
   Q: How many Unix Support staff does it take to screw in a light bulb?   
   A: Read the man page!   
      
      
   Q: Is there a proper procedure for asking the Support staff questions?   
   A: Questions will not be answered by the Support staff unless the   
   proper procedure is used.   
      
      
   Q: Why do Support staff email messages always end in quotes no one   
   understands?   
   A: "The way is void" - Musashi   
      
   *.*   
      
   At our house, the litter box reeks because nobody will empty it.   
   There are always fresh stains   
   on the curtains and sofa from territory marking.   
   We get moldy kibble   
   ground into the carpet at every feeding.   
      
   I can't imagine how it could be worse . . . unless, of course,   
   we had pets.   
      
   *.*   
      
   "I ran into an old friend from high school the other day   
   and she looked marvelous!   
   She hadn't gained an ounce, and she didn't have a single wrinkle . .   
   so I ran into her again!"   
      
      
   The doctor was lecturing a class on sex.   
   He asked,   
   "Do you know what the first oral contraceptive was?"   
      
   A coed said, "No"   
      
   The doctor replied, "Exactly!"   
      
      
   An economist is a man who gets invited   
   to speak at banquets   
   where he tells everybody there's no such thing   
   as a free lunch.   
      
      
   Congress was upset that one of its own members'   
   offices was searched with a warrent.   
   But none of them seemed upset by the fact   
   that the guy is accused of taking a $100,000 bribe.   
      
      
   A few words mumbled by a minister   
   and people are married.   
   A few words mumbled by a sleeping husband   
   and people are divorced!"   
      
   *.*   
      
   I was stopped once for going 53 in a 35 mile zone,   
   but I told them I was dyslexic   
      
      
   I figured out a way to slow down inflation.   
   Turn it over to a government worker!   
      
      
   The only one of your children who does not grow up   
   and move away is your husband.   
      
      
   The trouble with doing something right the first time is that   
   nobody appreciates how difficult it was.   
      
   *.*   
      
   Oneliners   
      
   Before the '60s, most teenagers used self-control.   
      
   Money talks, but credit has an echo.   
      
   Practice courtesy. You never know when it might become popular again   
      
   One man's wage rise is another man's price increase.   
      
   The most enjoyable form of sex education is the Braille method   
      
   What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner.   
      
   Issue of the Times;   
   The Gummint Skools by Vin Suprynowicz   
      
   "That biological parents are the enemies of their offspring"   
      
   A Dec. 31 Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial detailed some of the $7   
   billion   
   in spending the members of the 2007 Nevada Legislature have already   
   proposed - all while earnestly bleating that no tax hikes will be   
   required.   
      
   "Atop the list," we noted, "is a mandatory program to round up all of   
   Nevada's children and lock them away from the subversive influence of   
   their   
   biological parents in day-long, tax-funded baby-sitting centers, not at   
   the   
   age of 6 (which is bad enough), but at the age of 5."   
      
   A well-intentioned soul objected that the "references to all-day   
   kindergarten in Sunday's lead editorial are so sarcastic that few readers   
   will give them credence."   
      
   But no sarcasm was intended.   
      
   Those interested in the history that backs up that brief reference might   
   start with "The Tyranny of Compulsory Schooling," a speech by former   
   multiple-year New York City (and state) PUBLIC SCHOOL Teacher of the Year   
   John Taylor Gatto.   
      
   There you will find:   
      
   "Sweden, a rich, healthy, and beautiful country, with a spectacular   
   reputation for quality in everything, won't allow children to enter school   
   before they're seven years old. The total length of Swedish schooling is   
   nine years, not twelve, after which the average Swede runs circles around   
   the over-schooled American. Why don't you know these things? To whose   
   advantage is it that you don't? ..."   
      
   Then, explaining why our government seeks to get it hands on our kids at a   
   more formative stage, purposely seeking to divorce children from the   
   subversive influence of their own biological parents, Mr. Gatto details   
   the   
   Prussian connection.   
      
   After that German state's "humiliating defeat by Napoleon in 1806, a new   
   system of schooling was the instrument out of which Prussian vengeance was   
   shaped, a system that reduced human beings during their malleable years to   
   reliable machine parts, human machinery dependent upon the state for its   
   mission and purpose," Mr. Gatto has learned. "When Blucher's Death's Head   
   Hussars destroyed Napoleon at Waterloo, the value of Prussian schooling   
   was   
   confirmed. ...   
      
   "By 1905, Prussian trained Americans, or Americans like John Dewey who   
   apprenticed at Prussian-trained hands, were in command of every one of our   
   new institutions of scientific teacher training: Columbia Teacher's   
   College,   
   the University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins, the University of Wisconsin,   
   Stanford," Mr. Gatto continues. "The domination of Prussian vision, and   
   the   
   general domination of German philosophy and pedagogy, was a fait accompli   
   among the leadership of American schooling.   
      
   "You should care about this for the compelling reason that German   
   practices   
   were used here to justify removal of intellectual material from the   
   curriculum; it may explain why your own children cannot think. That was   
   the   
   Prussian way - to train only a leadership cadre to think.   
      
   "Of all the men whose vision excited the architects of the new   
   Prussianized   
   American school machine, the most exciting were a German philosopher named   
   Hegel and a German doctor named Wilhelm Wundt. ... G. Stanley Hall, one of   
   Wundt's personal protgs (who as a professor at Johns Hopkins had   
   inoculated his star pupil, John Dewey, with the German virus) ... shrewdly   
   sponsored and promoted an American tour for the Austrian doctor Sigmund   
   Freud so that Freud might popularize his theory that PARENTS AND THE   
   FAMILY   
   WERE THE CAUSE OF VIRTUALLY ALL MALADJUSTMENT (emphasis added) - all the   
   more reason to remove their little machines to the safety of schools. ...   
      
   "Teacher training in Prussia was founded on three premises, which the   
   United   
   States subsequently borrowed. The first of these is that the state is   
   sovereign, the only true parent of children. Its corollary is that   
   BIOLOGICAL PARENTS ARE THE ENEMIES OF THEIR OFFSPRING. When Germany's   
   Froebel invented Kindergarten, it was not a garden for children he had in   
   mind but a garden of children, in which state-appointed teachers were the   
   gardeners of the children. Kindergarten is meant to PROTECT CHILDREN FROM   
   THEIR OWN MOTHERS. ...   
      
   "The best-known device to break the will of the young, practiced for   
   centuries among English and German upper classes, was the separation of   
   parent and child AT AN EARLY AGE. Here now was an institution backed by   
   the   
   police power of the state to guarantee that separation. ..."   
      
   The theory is advanced that mandatory government day-care for 5-year-olds   
   is   
   necessary to ameliorate the burden of day care expenses on young parents.   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)