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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

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

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