sparrow chat

My thanks to Al DeVito of Vineyard Views for sending me an article from the WSJ describing the Aspirnaut Initiative. ^[1]

The Aspirnaut Initiative was developed by Bill Hudson, Director of the Center for Matrix Biology at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. On a journey back to his home town of Grapevines, Arkansas, he was alarmed to note that students were spending three hours a day riding the bus to and from school.

The program provides laptops, iPods, and wireless internet access on the school bus, allowing students living in remote rural areas to study educational courses while traveling between school and home. Still very much in the ‘pilot’ stage, it is hoped to expand the project to take in other geographical areas over time.

The advantages of the program are obvious, though – says the WSJ – some students find it difficult to focus on work when the bus is bouncing over gravel roads. As an expert on the school bus environment, I can categorically agree that few students would have the necessary concentration to overcome distractions created by such surroundings.

The American school bus is of profoundly antiquated design. Even the most modern leave a great deal to be desired. Transporting kids to school does not, in the view of authority, warrant much in the way of creature comfort. Seats are cramped, air-conditioning usually non-existent, and lighting would be drastically improved with the addition of half a dozen candles.

The latest model, the inaccurately named, ‘Saf-T-Liner C2′, may, according to the manufacturer, Thomas, “define the future of school bus transportation,” ^[2] but, if that’s so, then the future for America’s schoolkids will look alarmingly similar to the past. The C2 is somewhat quieter, and the ride comfort improved, over its predecessor, the FS-65, but then that would be true for any vehicle more sophisticated than a go-cart.

The C2 is also an inherently unsafe vehicle. Thomas’s blurb describes the bus as having “a driver visibility footprint that no other Type C could match.” This is true with regard to the driver’s view of the road ahead, but side visibility is grossly impaired by two over-sized window stanchions – one 9 inches wide, the other 6 inches wide and aligning perfectly with the large side-view mirrors – which make pulling out across traffic a nightmare, given the plethora of blind-spots created by these obstacles. The old FS-65 was a much better design, at least, in this important regard.

I began driving buses in 1967 for Birkenhead Municipal Transport Corporation – later, Merseyside Passenger Transport Executive. By the early 1970′s, the vehicles I was driving were far in advance of anything used to transport schoolkids in the United States today. The front loading, rear-engined, Daimler Fleetlines and Leyland Atlanteans of the era were smooth, quiet, had semi-automatic gears, pneumatic doors, and a braking capability far in advance of the Thomas Saf-T-Liner of 2008.

Above, a 1973 Leyland Atlantean – an absolute joy to drive. (Note the wrapped windscreen, curved back almost to the entrance doors for maximum all-round visibility).

Below, a 2008 Thomas Saf-T-Liner C2, a bus with the worst side visibility of any vehicle I’ve ever driven: (Inside, the yellow windscreen stanchion measures 9 inches in width, and the one behind the tiny triangular side window is 6 inches wide):

But what, I hear you ask, has any of this to do with the Aspirnaut Initiative?

The Aspirnaut Initiative is, at best, a stop-gap. The number of kids capable of benefiting long-term from the program is small, due to its environmental limitations.

Quite simply, if the school bus is to be a classroom, then it’s necessary to provide a classroom-style environment: quiet, peaceful, supervised. The present-day transport utilized to carry schoolkids satisfies none of these requirements.

Frankly, subjecting children to a three hour round trip each day is appalling. It borders on abuse. These kids lost their rural schools for one reason only – to save cash. It’s cheaper to transport them many miles each day than provide the necessary educational establishments closer to home. But, that transport also has to be the cheapest possible. Hence, the Thomas Saf-T-Liner C2, a cheap and crappy vehicle Europe wouldn’t have tolerated even back in the 1970′s.

The internet is a great tool for teaching kids. It has the capacity to beam the best possible education into small local schools, allowing one or two teachers to act in a supervisory capacity, while the main teaching is done onscreen from a larger establishment.

That way, kids can go to school locally and still receive a similar standard of education to those in the larger towns.

It makes far more sense than expecting kids to study while traveling for hours in something that has advanced little since the days of the Deadwood stagecoach.

^{[1] “Internet Access Turns School Buses Into Rolling Classrooms” WSJ, December 29th 2008}

^{[2] “Merls Bus Sales”}

Filed under: More wrong answers

Posted under Sparrow Chat

No-one, other than a fanatical Hamas supporter, would argue that all in Gaza are innocents. There is fault on both sides in this latest violent clash between the people of Gaza and the state of Israel. The cease fire of the previous six months neither prevented rocket attacks by the Palestinians on Israeli towns in the north, nor dissuaded Israel from continuing plans to attack Gaza – plans ongoing for more than a year.

In the last three years, nine Israelis have died as the result of rockets fired from Gaza. In the same period, nearly fifteen hundred Palestinians have died in Gaza due to Israeli aggression. Both statistics were compiled prior to the ongoing Israeli attacks, and highlight the disproportionate response of the Jewish state.

At the time of writing, the BBC is reporting a Palestinian death toll of 347, since Saturday.^[1] Of these, 62 are considered “civilian” deaths. According to UN humanitarian chief John Holmes, this figure only relates to women and children. Adult males are not considered “civilian”, and therefore aren’t included. Obviously, this means the true “civilian” death toll is much higher.

Israel, apparently, regrets killing women and children, but considers all adult males to be potential Hamas members, and consequently fair game.

Gaza is the most densely populated piece of land on the face of the planet. Like the Americans before them in Iraq, Israel is using the myth of precision bombing to justify imposing collective punishment on the people of Gaza. After keeping them at near starvation levels for months, depriving them of fuel, power, medicines, and the basic necessities of life, the Israeli government now considers them sufficiently cowed to smash their morale by its very own version of “shock and awe”.

Collective punishment is not new. It was widely used by the Nazis during the German occupation of European nations between 1938 and 1945. Commonly, whenever a German was killed by the resistance, a number of local townspeople were shot in retaliation.

Over the last three years, Israel has killed roughly 150 Palestinians for every Israeli murdered by rockets from Gaza. Can it be given any name other than collective punishment?

American support for the latest Israeli aggression is total. Why would it be otherwise when Jews are in control of the United States? If you doubt that fact, just check out the numbers of Jewish politicians and government officials in Washington. Given the power of the Jewish community in this country, are they likely to speak out in protest against their own people?

The history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a catalogue of wrongs, with nothing – absolutely nothing – done right. The first, and greatest, of those wrongs was committed in 1917, when British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour issued the “Balfour Declaration”. For any government to sanction the occupation of a foreign land by one religious group was irresponsible in the extreme, but Britain was winning a World War and brimming with arrogance and Empire. The Arab was considered a lowly creature, expendable, by most Englishmen of the day, with the exception of T.E. Laurence. Giving away Arab lands to appease an unruly lobby, the Zionist movement, seemed a reasonable solution to a thorny problem.

All this began long before the Nazi extermination camps of WW2, but Hitler’s treatment of European Jews created sufficient excuse for the newly founded United Nations to support the establishment of a Jewish state of Israel, despite bitter Arab opposition.

Ever since, a combination of Jewish aggression and Arab intransigence has maintained a violent stalemate that continues to this day. Adding to the insolvency of the situation has been the total commitment of the United States to its Jewish ally, dragging European partners dependent on the US for umbrella defense, often unwillingly, with it. The Arab cause has felt isolated, with no powerbase to turn to for assistance. Israel has consistently ignored UN resolutions and expanded its territories further into Palestinian lands at every available opportunity.

Perhaps the greatest block to peace in the region has been the continual, cold-bloodedly arrogant, attitude of successive Israeli governments. Wealthy, a nuclear power well supplied with US weapons technology, Israel is well placed to lord it over the region, suppressing resistance to its enslavement of the Palestinian people as a sledgehammer swats a fly.

It’s only a matter of time, however, before an Arab state acquires a nuclear weapon. That would drastically undermine Israel’s power in the region, so much that the Jewish state will go to any lengths to prevent it happening. It’s for this reason the US Israel lobby whipped up so much frenzy recently over Iran’s moves to enrich uranium.

Peaceful resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has always been scuppered by a combination of arms dealers, religious extremists, and political greed. The attitude of a majority of Israelis towards Palestinians is that they are simply scum. They wish they’d just go away. Few Israelis are inconvenienced these days by the Palestinians. Unless you’re unfortunate enough to live in Sderot or Ashkelon, and are hit by a Katyusha fired from Gaza, the concrete wall and checkpoints will keep most Palestinians out in the desert.

One day, the refusal of Israel to curb its arrogant expansion and seriously enter into meaningful negotiations with its Arab neighbors, will result in a nuclear war in the Middle East. When that happens, the rest of the world will rue the day it didn’t do more to curb its American ally’s militaristic support and enthusiasm for the Jewish state of Israel.

Of course, by then it will be too late.

^{[1] “Israel vows war on Hamas in Gaza” BBC, December 30th 2008}

Filed under: Israeli/Palestinian conflict

Posted under Sparrow Chat

The ability to preview comments is now a feature of Sparrow Chat (eat your heart out Blogger!). It’s still somewhat in the ‘beta’ stage, so if anyone suffers any problems please let me know at once. So far as I can tell all is working fine, but I need you guys and gals out there to give it a thorough workout and report any glitches.

Posted under Sparrow Chat

Two hours ago the tornado sirens sounded. It’s mid-winter, but central Illinois was apparently threatened with annihilation by destructive atmospheric vortices.

Immediately, fifty thousands residents rushed to the TV and their local weather station: ground radar displays a huge line of storms heading straight for our town; tornado warnings and watches are in force over the entire area; the weather girl is virtually orgasmic, her normally shrill warble managing another two octaves at the sheer joy of reporting something more arousing than the endless round of snow and ice events predominant at this time of year.

A cold front from Canada is colliding with the warm southerly flow presently basking central Illinois in temperatures of sixty-five degrees. The result is hell breaking loose. Three major storms are due to intersect over our county at any moment. Rotation has been spotted in the upper atmosphere. The weather girl virtually wets herself as she shrieks for everyone to take cover: go to the lowest floor of your house, hide in a room with no windows; cover yourself with something protective; bend down, head between the legs, kiss your ass goodbye……

My wife looks across at me as we sit on our sofa in the living room. We are on the lowest level; we have no room without windows. I shrug, get up, and peer out into the winter bleakness. The sky is gray; it’s raining slightly, the trees sway lithely in a light, southerly, breeze.

The TV screen is a bedlam of swirling radar, large red and yellow blotches, superimposed arrows tracing the storm’s path – straight towards our house, it appears. Breaking news, a barn has been demolished not five miles away; the local weather-tracker van is rushing to bring us pictures.

My wife vanishes into the bedroom and reappears with four pillows. I raise an inquiring eyelid.

“To cover our heads,” she says.

I nod, as though sitting on a sofa with pillows on my head is an obviously sane and sensible idea in the circumstances. After all, she’s the Illinoisan; she knows about these things. I’m just a Brit with no experience of tornadoes.

Suddenly, the weathergirl’s hysteria climaxes. We’re all about to die. I consider reaching for a pillow. A bright-red blotch covers our bit of the map; the heaven’s open and raindrops bounce off the shingles.

For a full two minutes the cloudburst continues unabated. Then, as swiftly as it arrived, it departs. Somewhere, away in the distance, one lonesome rumble of thunder.

I turn back to the TV for guidance, but they’ve switched to adverts.

Filed under: Illinois excitement

Posted under Sparrow Chat

Boxing Day is the most wonderful day ever.

After all the tensions and craziness of the lead up to Christmas -you know, the shopping, cooking, preparing for visiting relatives (if you’re unfortunate enough to have any), the hassle of rising early on Christmas morn, opening presents, stuffing oneself silly with turkey and Chateau de Chasselas, lying around bloated all afternoon while the family watch “It’s A Wonderful Life”, followed by the inevitable turkey sandwiches for afternoon tea and supper – Boxing Day is a day of gradual recuperation.

The relatives have gone, what’s left of the turkey’s been confined to the freezer, the fire’s blazing in the hearth, and no-one found that extra bottle of Chateau de Chasselas stashed carefully behind the sofa before the hordes invaded yesterday.

Boxing Day is a time to relax after the exertions of Christmas, reflect on the hubbub of yesterday, and feel content with life and everything around you.

What a pity Americans insist on rushing back to work the day after Christmas. They miss out on so much.

A cold turkey sandwich, anyone?

Filed under: Pity the oppressed

Posted under Sparrow Chat

It’s Christmas time once again. It’s that period of the year when all the idiots and warmongers get together to fight about whether it’s politically correct to call it “Christmas”, or “Holidays”, or “Holy Hannukah”, or maybe just invent a completely new name that won’t satisfy anyone?

These arguments have nothing to do with Christmas, of course. It’s more about religious, or atheistic, hooligans allowing free reign to their egos. They love anything and everything that creates contention in the world, which is somewhat ironic when you consider they all plead a belief in the message of Christmas, if not the name.

Remember? It’s all about peace and goodwill towards men.

When I was a small boy I grew out of believing in a “Son of God” almost as quickly as I realized my dad was masquerading as Santa Claus. It didn’t diminish the magic one iota, though. For me, the magic of Christmas was its ability to transform people. I relished the tales of World War One soldiers leaving their trenches on Christmas Day, shaking hands with the enemy, and even playing soccer with them in No Man’s Land. The next day they’d be doing their utmost to kill each other, but for this one day of the year they became friends and shared a bit of love.

Now THAT’S Christmas magic.

Christmas transformations weren’t confined to the battlefield, either. Times were hard for most in Britain just after the end of the second world war, but everyone was happy around Christmastime, there was truly an aura of peace and goodwill on the streets. Strangers exchanged greetings, and a sense of camaraderie pervaded the land.

We didn’t hear much about the US in those days, but if Hollywood exported any accurate sense of America in the 1950′s, then there’s every reason to believe it was a similar situation over here.

The magic of Christmas isn’t reliant on Santa Claus or Jesus Christ being what we were once told they were. The spiritual messages of both are similar. Santa ensured that every child in the world had a toy on Christmas Day, and Jesus set out to teach us how to live together in harmony, peace, and goodwill.

In a sense, both failed. Millions of children get nothing but empty bellies and misery on Christmas Day, and the human race is further than ever from even an inkling of peaceful coexistence.

Can we blame Santa or Jesus for that? No, of course not. We only have ourselves to blame, because it’s not about Godly intervention, or magical reindeer rides, it’s about us – you and me.

Yes, YOU – Christian! And YOU – Jew! And YOU – Muslim! And YOU – atheist!

Since time immemorial we’ve all been side-stepping our responsibilities and blaming the other person for the problems in this world. We’ve all argued and bickered to achieve what we want, to the detriment of the other man, or woman.

There is no peace, or goodwill, or harmony at Christmas anymore. We don’t have time for such things. We’re much to busy slagging off the Jew, or Christian, or Muslim, or atheist, while pretending we’re all terribly politically correct by arguing that we should call it something other than Christmas.

I’m neither a Christian, nor a Jew, nor a Muslim, nor an atheist. I’m just a man who’s sick of war, sick of the stupid bickering that makes a mockery of the Christmas message, and sick of my fellow men and women convincing themselves they have a god-given right to slaughter their fellows without compunction.

The Christmas message from Sparrow Chat this year goes out to all you Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, or whatever you care to label yourselves, and whether you are black, white, pink, yellow, puce, or green with blue spots:

May you allow the True Spirit of Christmas, with its accompanying peace, harmony, and goodwill to ALL men, to descend on you and remain with you, not just for the short holiday period, but always and forever.

You don’t need religion to achieve this. The Spirit of Christmas doesn’t descend from Heaven, it’s in your heart. All you have to do is let it out, and stop believing you’re the bee’s knees and everyone else is shit.

If you really do, there’s just a chance you may change the world.

Or, you might end up crucified.

“MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL READERS”

Filed under: Christmas message

Posted under Sparrow Chat

R J Adams     December 24, 2008 at 4:08pm     4 Comments

If there’s one thing you can rely on from the Pope, it’s to spread the message of Christmas throughout the world at this time of year. Of all the clerics, surely this so-called ‘shepherd of his flock’ is the worst Christian ever to don a holy robe?

In a speech to senior Vatican staff yesterday, Benedict XVI stated his belief that homosexual and transsexual behavior could lead to the self destruction of the human race, and saving humanity from such action was, he stated, “as important as saving the rain forests.” ^[1]

Frankly, most sane human beings would consider the escalation of nuclear armaments, the proliferation of wars, rapidly increasing areas of famine throughout the world, vastly shifting power-ratios between rich and poor, the ravishing of the world’s economy, and the ever-increasing threat from religiously-inspired terrorism, to be somewhat more likely reasons for the destruction of humanity than a couple of gays making out in downtown San Francisco.

The pope, it appears, is an exception to the rule. That’s fine. After all he’s entitled to his opinion. As the leader and appointed soothsayer to God knows how many of the faithful, however, his narrow-minded beliefs are almost as dangerous as any one of the threats listed above.

After all, there are millions of people worldwide quite happy to accept his mutterings as gospel, if for no better reason than it saves them the problem of cranking up their brains and thinking for themselves.

As an aside during the same address, Popey mentioned the Catholic church’s World Youth Day held in Sydney, Australia, earlier this year. He expressed concern that it was depicted as a spectacle – a, “variant of modern youth culture, as a kind of ecclesiastical rock festival with the Pope as the star.” This was wrong, he said, it should be viewed as the fruition of a “long exterior and interior path.”

Sorry, Popey, it was an ecclesiastical rock festival with you as the star. It was depicted as such because that’s exactly what it was. Believe me, I’ve been to a few rock festivals in my time and the only exception with yours, was that you’re bloody useless on guitar.

Personally, I’d have preferred Elton John – but, oh no, in your eyes he’s more dangerous to the human race than global warming, nuclear annihilation, and mass starvation all rolled into one.

It’d be fun to be around to see the faces of these religious idiots when they finally discover, once and for all, that “Heaven” doesn’t exist.

Frankly, if the rest of the human race continue to soak up their pathetic utterances as sacrosanct, that time may not be long away.

^{[1] “Pope attacks blurring of gender” BBC, December 23rd 2008}

Filed under: Love thy neighbor

Posted under Sparrow Chat

Two items merited attention on the NBC Nightly News tonight, due entirely to the contrast between them. The first was a last ditch attempt by that wealthy scumbag presently occupying the White House, at salvaging something of his presidential legacy by offering a financial carrot worth around $17.5 billion to a terminally sick donkey, long abused and starved of sustenance by its masters to the point it will soon require euthanasia, and masquerading as the US motor industry.

American vehicles have long been viewed as tat by the rest of the world. Outdated, cheaply-made, prone to failure, and totally out of their league among the more sophisticated European and Japanese vehicles available, one only has to hear the experts’ opinions on products from the US motor industry to realize how grossly left behind by the rest of the planet this industry has become over the last twenty years.

Had the senior management of Chrysler and GM bothered to look beyond their own borders during the eighties and nineties they would have seen the R&D being pumped into Volkswagon, Toyota, Honda, Citroen, and other manufacturers. Instead, they sat on their buttocks and filled their pockets with cash that might have been better used funding similar technologies, rather than supporting the private jets and high-flying lifestyles of top executives.

Does George W Bush seriously believe $17.5 billion will save this dinosaur industry? Possibly, he’s stupid and arrogant enough to imagine himself saving GM at its last gasp, like some aging North American Saint George rescuing the damsel from the jaws of the dragon. Unfortunately, in this case the damsel’s already been eaten and the bones regurgitated.

The British motor industry suffered a similar fate twenty years ago after the government of the day poured billions of pounds into British Leyland in a vain attempt to keep it afloat. It’s demise was due to exactly similar circumstances as that of Chrysler and GM today – a senior management team that couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery, let alone run a major industry. Ironically, British Leyland lost out to the more advanced Ford and Vauxhall (GM produced) vehicles of the day.

The biggest stink, and the one most motivating to British politicians of the time, concerned the thousands of BL production staff who would be thrown out of work if the industry was allowed to die. It did die, and they were left jobless, but government retraining schemes meant most found work in other sectors. That’s what must happen in the US today. As green technologies gain ground in the marketplace, ex-carworkers can be trained to fill the many jobs created by these new industries.

To use life-support on a patient already dead reveals the stupidity of a president who insists that throwing money at an extinct dinosaur in the hope of making it breathe again is the ‘responsible’ thing to do. Of course, it has nothing at all to do with responsibility, but a great deal to do with one man’s over-inflated ego.

The second item from NBC Nightly News was more heartrending. It revealed some of the letters received by the US post office during its annual ‘Dear Santa’ campaign, and by so doing laid bare the heart of American poverty. When tiny kids ask Santa for clothes to keep them warm, and anguished mothers beg money to provide a meal for their child at Christmas, it not only tugs at the heartstrings, but exposes the true hypocrisy of that great marketing ploy, the ‘American Dream’.

Maybe there was a time when the ‘American Dream’ was more than hype, though delving through history fails to unearth it, but the last eight years has seen such a decline in this nation’s fortunes that the legacy of George W Bush will never be saved by postponing the demise of the car industry. His is a legacy of economic catastrophe, of millions thrown into poverty both at home and abroad; his is a legacy of five million orphans in Iraq and countless numbers of children brought to suffering in America.

George W Bush was happy to dip into this nation’s coffers to the tune of $700 billion for the purpose of saving his buddies in the banking industry, and now at Chrysler and GM. He was happy to spend a trillion dollars destroying a Middle Eastern nation, and unnecessarily slaughtering over four thousand Americans in the process.

If there’s one thing George W Bush can do well it’s spend money. Unfortunately, what he chose to spend it on has been highly detrimental to those people he was supposed to represent. What a different, and better, country this would be if he’d chosen to spend it ensuring American kids had warm clothes in the winter, and American mothers could afford at least one meal for their child at Christmas.

Filed under: Political scumbags

Posted under Sparrow Chat