I started reading Wil Wheaton’s blog a few years ago when he was one of the few celebrities who had a blog or any type of interactive web site. Hell his blog existed before MySpace (you mean there was life before MySpace.. *GASP*), so he’s got some street cred in the blogging community.

Anyway I always used to enjoy when Wil went off on a political tirade usually full of venom for some member of the vast right-wing conspiracy he had in his crosshairs at the moment. Yes i am exaggerating about the venom and the crosshairs but not about the fact that Wil always felt free to voice his thoughts about politics and especially about our current President. Recently, however, he’s been posting a lot of family-friendly bonding with the kids kinda stuff. He also blogged through a poker tournament which I just found odd. Poker + beer + smoking = normal. Poker + blogging = ??

Anyway Wil went off about Bush allowing himself access to everyone’s snail mail, and defended himself with valid stats when the public backlash started in his following post. This is the kind of stuff that always drew me into his blog and its unfortunate that he doesn’t get riled up more often. I guess he’s busy protecting his wife and kids from having their email and snail mail read and having their phones tapped.

Today I returned some Christmas gifts to Wal-Mart. I am hopeful that that was my last trip to Wal-Mart ever as I resolved to boycott the store in the New Year. If I am successful at surviving without Wal-Mart in 2007 I may never return to the store if I can help it.

My reasons for boycotting Wal-Mart are numerous, but the vast majority of them have been identified by bloggers and news outlets world wide already. We all know that Wal-Mart is destroying the American economy and eroding society.

1. When Wal-Mart enters a community, small businesses close because they are unable to compete with Wal-Mart’s pricing schemes even if they are providing higher quality goods that are not imported from China. Displaced employees of the businesses that close are forced to take lower paying jobs at Wal-Mart and many of them are unable to afford Wal-Mart’s benefits package even if they are offered benefits.
2. Certain Wal-Marts seem to pay male and female employees on different pay scales. There are a few current law suits going on about this matter and even though it’s still up in the air, I’ve heard it with my own ears from enough Wal-Mart employees to believe it.
3. Wal-Mart hires employees (either directly or through outside agencies) that have questionable immigration status.
4. When I enter a Wal-Mart, 90% of the time I am unable to find an associate that can assist me with my questions or who can direct me to the goods I am looking for. When I lived in Orlando, FL for almost 5 years, the Wal-Mart closest to my home employed an almost entirely spanish speaking staff. Unfortunately, less than 10% of them spoke English, therefore getting assistance was virtually impossible.
5. The goods are of inferior quality and will need replacing several times compared to similar items purchased at other stores.
6. The vast majority of the goods are imported from China.
7. The prices on the self are regularly inaccurate.
8. Wal-Mart does not check the integrity of goods that are returned before they re-shelf them for sale again.
9. Wal-Mart embraces censorship.
10. The smock and smiley face are just degrading and insulting. When is the last time you saw a Wal-Mart employee smile?

Americans used to fight for quality products. People used to read Consumer Reports before they made a purchase or they listened to product news to make informed decisions about what they were planning to buy. When I was growing up, my parents used to spend a lot of money on one or two pairs of sneakers or shoes for me to wear to school. Now mothers would rather take their kids to Wal-Mart and buy several pairs of shoes of an inferior quality (replacing the cheap ones when they wear out) than buy one pair of quality shoes with a good guarantee that could last several months to a year.

I understand that people would oppose my stance because Wal-Mart allows people who have very little money to afford to live a more comfortable life. Some of the poorest people in the poorest areas of America (dirt roads, no electricity, no sewer systems, no running water) are the people who would benefit the most from companies like Wal-Mart. Do you ever see a Wal-Mart planned in or near to these areas? No because they would not make enough money in these communities to warrant the cost of opening a facility.

I am not boycotting Wal-Mart with the intention of starting some big local movement to block Wal-Mart from the Raleigh area. I am not doing this in league with any of the big existing organizations that are taking steps to fight Wal-Mart. I am doing this on my own of my own volition. I am doing this simply because I feel that there are no positive effects of the growth of Wal-Mart. I don’t feel that the few cents that I could possibly save there makes up for having to purchase replacement items constantly and
helping to sustain the trade imbalance the U.S. has with China. I hope that other people who read my blog would be compelled to do the same.

Anyone else find it peculiar that “intelligence” is saying that there are Al Qaeda in the U.S. planning an attack between the political conventions and the election? The first reports just didn’t say that there were Al Qaeda here planning an attack. They went so far as to announce that the attack was being planned to occur between the conventions and the election, conveniently. I, personally, have come to accept the fact that no matter what we do, Al Qaeda and their supporters live, work, and thrive within the boundaries of this country. I am not, however, as receptive of the thought that our “intelligence” has determined that the attack will happen within a specific period of time. American intelligence is an oxymoron when it comes to terrorism. These are the people who tried to pursue a video game character. At any rate, my parents and I agreed months ago that the Bush camp would have found “intelligence” indicating a stragetically timed attack on this country. After all the bad press Bush is dealing with now, you would think that this “intelligence” ploy would’ve been scratched off the list. Jason finds this one fishy and he’s been known to occasionally say good things about Bush. Oh well.

So I got up really early this morning. In fact I never really went to bed *smirk* so I turned on the Sunday morning news for kicks. They were doing a special on the state of education, namely reading skills, among Florida youth. Being interested in education, I started to watch this special and I was astounded by what is going on down here.

According to the research, over two thirds of tenth graders in the Florida public high school system have reading skills below average for their grade level. Yeah, you read right, TWO THIRDS. Governor Jeb recently got eleven million dollars in funding to revamp the way reading is taught to children in the school system down here. Revamp? You mean there is more than one way to teach children to read?

Apparently the Florida school system employs a “wholistic” approach to teaching fundamental reading skills. Essentially, they expose children to books and give them “meaningful assignments” that encourage them to read. What this boils down to is they put a kid with no fundamental reading skills in a room full of books and give them assignments on their reading. There is no step-by-step process to teach the kids basic phonics skills, model reading behavior, read aloud in groups, or any of the things I did as a child when I was learning to read. Of course I am one of the exceptions to the rule. I was reading books on my own before I started first grade (which was considered advanced even in a New York City private school), so I can’t really compare my experience to what these kids are getting, but simple logic tells me that it’s all bullshit. How can you expect a child to learn to read if you don’t teach them the sounds of the letters. How can they make the connection between written and spoken word without this kind of learning? How can they just pick up a book and spontaneously read it and comprehend it without any of the tools that are necessary to read?

This “new research” that Governor Jeb got the 11 million dollars of funding based on is essentially a laundry list of the skills and tools that were used by my parents and my school to help me learn to read. This research states that children have to be taught the alphabet, the phonetic representations associated with the letters in the alphabet, and basic grammatical structures to begin reading. If this is news to you, faithful reader of my blog, please feel free to contact me immediately and tell me how you learned to read. I was under the assumption that all of the things I mentioned above were necessary requisites for learning to read. The research goes on to also state that reading education should be specific, and the assignments and lessons should be explicit in their purpose.. as opposed to sitting a kid in a room full of books and waiting for them to learn to read via osmosis.

If I sound sarcastic and a little bit angry, you’re wrong. I’m really pissed off about this situation. No wonder why I haven’t met anyone my age down here in a bookstore. Two thirds of them can’t read on their age level, so I’d never run into them outside of the children’s section! Can you honestly believe that this kind of thing still exists in American education system? We are the richest country in the world and the greater population of certain states can’t read on their age level. No wonder why we’re a running joke internationally.

In my humble opinion, I think there should be a national education system with national exams for basic literacy, math skills, science/technology, and analytical skills. More than half of the countries on the planet have similar systems, and their kids are going to be the ones coming here and getting the jobs that our kids used to get. Technology companies are outsourcing their IT work in countries like India and China because the salaries are lower and the talent is much brighter. Let’s face it, national education systems and testing structures work (England, Canada..), why can’t we get together as a country and ignore state’s rights long enough to get our kids to read and write at age appropriate levels? What’s so scary about that? For the life of me I can’t figure it out…

If the RIAA has their way, everyone caught sharing music online will be fined to hell and back. If certain political factions have their way, file traders will be jailed.

Having established that, did these factions ever stop to think that if you put a bunch of file swappers in jail and fine the rest to oblivion, there will be no one left to buy music? Seriously. Who in their right mind, after having been fined or spent time in the slammer because of sharing music is ever going to give their money to the music industry again? I wouldn’t. Hell I’m not even buying new cds now because of this RIAA induced brouhaha. Furthermore, after having been sued and put through the ringer by
the RIAA’s legal mob, why would you ever give any of your money to the music industry?

Music sales were lackluster at best before the RIAA waged war against everyone in their way. File trading was blamed for the sluggish music sales in the past two years. Did anyone stop to think that maybe the quality of the music being released is pathetic? Who needs another friggin’ Ashanti album for $18.98? Furthermore, did the music-warmongers forget that the whole economy is crappy right now? I think the Bush Administration’s blind-eye/deaf-ear policy is rubbing off on other groups across the country. What do you think?

What’s with these so-called educators today? Why is it that when they fail at something, they blame everyone else. They blame the kids, their parents, society, technology, and anything else that they can pass the buck to. Their failures result in the gross undereducation of American children and sorry excuses for teaching methods like Ebonics. Who talks like that? I mean for real. If kids aren’t picking up proper English why would you burden them with ANOTHER vernacular?! It’s this mentality among many of the educators in this country that really lights my fire. They assume that since the children aren’t learning, it must be something OTHER THAN THEIR METHODS that is keeping the kids from acquiring the requisite knowledge.

The newest dying art in America is penmanship. Kids aren’t learning, or rather, aren’t being taught to write in cursive anymore and the blame, so bloody obviously, is falling on technology. Kids are using instant messaging and text messaging on mobile devices and they’re not learning how to write, furthermore they’re barely learning to print legibly. This if course is the fault of society, the parents, the kids, and the technology. The educators take no blame of course. Maybe if kids were held properly responsible for learning and writing in cursive, they’d actually learn it and be good at it. I come from a generation where your handwriting style was one of those things that helped to define you (aside from the silly handshakes with your friends, your favorite song, and those orange Cross Colors jeans you wore in HS). Now I guess your e-mail signature and buddy icon are what separates you from the others.