Ron's Brain

what you were thinking was awesomeness. that thing is best thing you've written. not that i know everything you've written.

The peanut allergy thing annoys me. Seriously the minority rule the freaking policies. At my sisters school there was one kid that had a peanut allergy. One kid out of around 500 and they couldnt bring in anything made with peanuts. Even like gummy snacks that had peanut oil in them. It is absurd to think that policy could be made because of .2% of the school has a peanut allergy. Oh and happy birthday to your relatives from some weird guy on your site.

It's due to an airborne allergy, which means if the person is within a few feet of anything peanut related, they might die. Not all that absurd.

It is still the minority ruling the majority which isn't right. Plus what is tha person going to do when the get older and get a job. Say that no one in the company can bring anything peanut related in to work or that none of the shippers or anybody who doesnt even work there but happens to come to that building for whatever reason can't have peanut related food or materials?

Let 'em die! The good of the many (peanut lovers) is more important than the good of the few (peanutophobes).

As Charlton Heston would say, "You can have my peanuts when you pry them from my cold, dead hands." Which, consequently, would happen to a lowly peanutophobe if he/she ever fervently gripped onto a handful of those tasty morsels.

The minority have a right to education just as much as the majority, so ensuring a safe place they can attend school must be a priority and enforced by policy. A peanut allergy isn't something someone chooses to have.

Hopefully people have their sarcasm detectors on for my previous post.

Is there an SI unit for sarcasm?

According to my sarcasm detector, the post in question has a reading of '3 sarcs'

And the majority have right to enjoy their peanut made products.

I feel that Derf is the minority in this discussion and he's not conforming to the majority's will of not wanting to explain to kindergarteners why their friend died.

As far as I know, there is no peanut ban at my school. If there were, I have countless other options for my lunch or snack and my overall quality of life would not be affected. (And I do love those peanut butter twix) My right to a peanut butter twix ends at someone's potentially deadly aversion to its presence.

Peanut butter twix < child's health.

But it is ridiculous to ban it entirely the person is going to have to learn how to deal with it anyways. What better place to learn how to deal with something than school.

PB Max > Peanut butter twix > child's health.

Fixed that for ya.

The real question, Derf, is: Do you want to be the principal who gets fired because a teacher had her back turned for a second and some kid shared a peanut butter sandwich and it killed the other kid?

I'm allergic to bullies. (Or was, back when I was a puny little kid.) Why weren't they banned from school?

What about other allergies then like strawberries or garlic. Should we ban what every kid is deathly allergic to because if they eat it they can die?

As far as I know, strawberry and garlic allergies aren't airborne. Peanut allergies are, potentially, and when the child has the airborne peanut allergy, then peanut products aren't allowed at the school.

So wait what about that kid that roles around in the peanuts before he goes to school. Does that mean he could potentially die from that kid?

If they banned peanut products... I would come dressed as a giant Mr Peanut, top hat, cane, monocle & all. Then I would sit next to the peanut kid all day. Staring right at him.

Let's bring asbestos back.

That would be freaking hilarious. I would pay to see it.

Oh I vote that the element system be changed so that no two people can have the same element. For example if I should say have one more post than someone else with bismuth I should be bismuth and they should be the element one lower than bismuth. Don't know how to work it with the unmentionable elements.

I think instead of starting at the bottom of the element chart, we should be ranked starting with Ron at hydrogen (because he posts the most) and Thunderclese, as second most poster, would be helium. And so on down the line. If Marcus made enough posts to overtake Thunderclese, he'd be helium and Thunderclese would be whatever the 3rd element is. I don't want to bother looking it up.

Maybe our ranks should be the top-posting usernames of the previous week.

We're currently in a position to have everyone assigned a unique element, but that won't be the case once we obtain more than 117 users.

Do you honestly think that will ever happen?

Burn!!!!

D'oh!

I feel that we're gettin too much negative energy here from Derf.

Then let's create some positive energy! Join hands and join me in a Wiccan prayer circle!

No. I don't like they Wiccans they turned me into a newt.

Wiccans are silly.

Just don't tell them that. They will get mad and do bad things to you.

Wiccan prayer circle!?! My three wives and two husbands take offense to your un-American ideas!

That must be interesting on parent teacher conference night when all 6 of you from into two little kindergarten seats.

Physically do bad things, or cast spells to do the bad things for them? Because I'm pretty sure the second one's pretty ineffective. Life ain't D&D.

They'll do even worse than psysical or magical damage. They'll make you a social outcast and do emotional damage -34;

I took my Prozac +3 vs. hobgoblins, so bring it on!

Wiccan's can turn you into a social outcast with their spells? AHH!!! The irony!

Why don't they just homeschool that one kid? All it takes is one parent to forget and pack Jr. a PBJ sammich and that poor child is history! What sort of parent gambles with the life of their child like that?

A little off topic, but about school, I think schools should be year round, if for no other reason, but to make the teachers earn their +$40,000 salary and great benefits. And before you do a knee-jerk "Teachers are so important, but they're underpaid", think about this - when was the last time you heard an actual figure? They're always talking about 'being poorly paid' because 'making +$40,000 a year for 9 months of work' doesn't invoke the same amount of sympathy.

Also, a great quote from Albert Shanker "When school children start paying union dues, that 's when I'll start representing the interests of school children."

So don't be under the missunderstanding that being in public school is anything great for kids. It's mostly good for the government, so they can be sure your child grows up to be a good, whatever they want your child to be, and it's good for teachers.

In Europe, some places are going to stop teaching about the Holocaust, because they're worried about kids who are being taught by their family and/or places of worship that it never happened. They don't want these kids confused.

In Germany, Hitler made it illegal to be homeschooled. He wanted to be in control of what the next generation of Germans were being taught.

Recently, a girl was expelled from her school when it was discovered her parents were tutoring her in Latin, a subject she was having trouble in. So they started homeschooling her because she was already expelled and she has since been removed from her parents custody by the government, based on the law put in place by Hitler. Crazy no?

I never bitched about my pay. However, if I go year around, I better be bumped up to 50k or else I'm getting re-educated. When you factor in the homework, planning, manditory extra curricular (in my school, every teacher is required to take up one), and professional development, some weeks I total about 80 hours. Even though it appears I'm online at home during the evening, a lot of that time is spent doing something job related. To conclude, I never bitched about my pay, teaching is not a cake walk, and I would leave this profession if it went year around just as fast as I'd leave the east coast if sharks learned how to fly.

I agree with Thunderpants while it is annoying to hear teachers complain about their pay they do earn their pay and for the most part are severely underpaid. Here is the reasoning: Teachers have at least bachelors degrees and for the most part they make very little to show for it. Teachers have to go back to school for the rest of their life to even keep their teaching certificate which is what most of them are doing over the summer. For the most part they have to pay for the classes out of their own pocket. Then when you look at the hours the teachers where I went to high school were there from 730-230 for teaching. Then most of them stayed for at least another 2 hours making what I saw was an average of 9 hours a day and I'm assuming they did more at home because if you say a teacher has 5 classes each with 30 students and they hand in an assignment every other day that is an average of 75 papers a day to take even 7 minutes to look at a paper is 3.75 hours a night of grading.so beyond their so that makes an average of 10.75 hours a day. If we take that at that they work 3/4s of the year that would make 2015 hours. Then if you divided that out over a normal year it would be 37.5 hours a week. So that would be just shy of normal working hours for a teacher with a modest amount work. If you factor in teachers paying for their own schooling or if they help out with anything else at the school you can see very quickly that they more than earn their money.

Sarah was paid less than $40K after having five years of teaching experience. Before she was laid off/quit/ran away, there was discussion about cutting the benefits completely, which was really the only reason she was working, as daycare, gasoline, insurance, etc. ate up a majority of her earnings. And, as Derf stated, she was at the school at least 9 hours a day, worked nights and weekends creating curriculum materials and grading work, had to deal with retarded parents, and attended a masters program full time to maintain her certification or be fired. If I had to do all that for the pay she was getting, I'd quit and let my dashing and well hung husband make the money.

Snicker...well hung huh?

There's apparently a law (in Iowa) that says if there's a union somewhere, like a school, you don't have to join it in order to be hired. It's a 'right-to-work' law. However, for some reason, the union is required to basically treat you as though you're paying them, even though you aren't. So as a nonunion member, by law, you get all the benefits the unioned (dues paying) members get.

People dislike this, so they decided they want a law that says even if you don't belong to the union, the union can still force you to pay dues.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but wouldn't it make more sense to simply change the original law to say if you aren't a member of the union, the union doesn't have to do anything for you? Why make it so the union has to treat you like a member, and then make it so you have to pay dues since you're being treated like a member?

Can someone clarify this? I've been following this law for a while in the newspaper, and I've yet to see anyone suggest perhaps the original law should be changed.