Television FAIL!

Ring the bell. Its Wednesday, November 17, 2010, class is in session, and this is The Side.

I've started a new little project. It seems that I keep getting asked for my name whenever I order something from fast food places. Happened at Chik-Fil-A just the other day. So I did what comes naturally.

"Can I get a name to put with the order."

"Yes, I'm Bruce Wayne."

Made things fun when the order was ready and they called Bruce Wayne to the counter. I'm not sure whether to stick with it, or have the whole Justice League make the rotation.

SCHOOL'D!!

School is an interesting thing. We spend our time in high school wishing it was over. Then we think back on it fondly. They say college is the best years of your life, but it doesn't seem like it when its three in the morning you're neck deep in assignments and you have class at eight in the morning. Then you spend the rest of your life remembering how amazing the whole thing was and proud of getting that degree.

But there's a price to be paid for this, and its more than just hard work. That price has gone up in England, and there are quite a few people none too happy about it. The cost of tuition has finally risen there, which led to protests and ultimately a riot. See, they feel they have a right to education. Well they do have a right to education, but do they have a right to a higher education? Not here they don't. College or University is a privilege. Not everybody gets to go. They either can't afford it or they don't have the grades. There's absolutely nothing wrong with not going to college. Its not for everyone. Plenty of people go out and learn a trade and work. So I don't have sympathy for a lot of those students. I'm sure there those who are working hard to pay their own way and are trying to get a degree, and to those students, I say good luck. Keep working hard, because that will pay off for you.

For those who are upset because their precious entitlement has been threatened and mommy and daddy might make you get a job to help pay for things so you decided to be an ass and cause property damage with your public fit: piss off.

The education hub-bub isn't just across the pond. There's a stink brewing here with schools doing away with "F"s. This is of course being done to try to make sure kids graduate, and is completely stupid. Education requires pressure. I teach Karate. I impart knowledge, and then I test that knowledge under pressure. That's what happened in schools, minus the bruising, usually. The thinking is that failing a student kills their motivation, their drive to learn.

This is flawed.

In the entire time I've trained kids I've only failed one student. They don't test until they are fully prepared for what I'm going to unleash on them. The student in question knew his stuff, but his performance was sorely lacking. Lacking to the point that I couldn't promote him. I told him he could try again in two weeks and I told exactly why he didn't pass.

In two weeks he was an entirely different student. He was already a good student, but getting flunked drove him to be better. He went on to become a very good martial artist and a fine black belt.

You see, the hard work isn't done in the dojo or classroom. Its done outside of there. Education isn't a right, but it is a responsibility. You can't teach a kid who doesn't want to learn. Somewhere that kid has to discover that learning is important. If they don't, they won't excel. Taking away the option of failing a student makes teachers pass students on before they are ready. According to the article they get an 'incomplete' and can do the work later. It takes the pressure off, so the poor, widdle student can do better.

Bullshit. All it does is making skating through school with minimal effort that much easier. I've recently considered getting my teaching certification and teaching more than just martial arts. Now I wonder if someone like me would be able to teach with the way the education system is going.

TV!!

Upon recently telling some dudes that I don't have cable they replied with an "Ooooh". The kind of "Ooooh" that's usually reserved for someone who has some unfortunate disease. Fortunately for all my lack of cable is not contagious.

So I can't see these shows that that people keep raving about. I've never seen MAD MEN, DEXTER, or THE SHIELD. I can't watch that new THE WALKING DEAD show as much as I'd love to compare it to the comic on here for a review. However, this is no huge loss to me. I grew up without cable. They didn't run cable to my neighborhood until the early 90s, and I was away at college where I did have a watered down version of cable in my dorm room. So I did indeed grow up without MTV, Nickelodeon, or HBO. We had six channels and that included PBS. It was what it was, and when there was nothing on TV, we just dealt with it.

So, after having cable for a few years I'm back to not having cable, which was all dandy until the digital conversion earlier this year. My TV is old and needed a converter box, which costs money, but fine. The problem with that converter box is that it comes with a rather small remote which works half the time and is easily lost, and if it is lost you better really like what channel the TV is on. And I've rambled at length as to why digital sucks compared to analog signal, and its not going to add anything here to rehash that.

What is weird is that TV will now spontaneously grow new channels making TV occasionally an adventure. OK, I know have 3 different PBS stations. One of them is entirely children's programming which is awesome until they ambush us with an episode of Barney. Beyond our local Fox affiliate are stations that are interesting and dangerous. There's a whole kid's station with cartoons, and ION which shows movies and stuff that I sometimes what to check out. They were reshowing old episodes of QUANTUM LEAP for a while. But exploring those stations is a risky proposition because 90% of the time if I go to those stations I get hit with my TV going gray and the remote locking up. I have no idea why this happens.

TV has also spawned 5 christian stations, one of them in Spanish, and all of which I have ignored. Yes, I am a Christian, but Christian TV stations are boring.

The latest thing is that TV has randomly grown music video stations. They just show music videos with a few commercials here and there. One is a country station, meaning they play videos of bands that are pop bands with cowboy hats and steel guitars. The other plays all sorts of stuff. No on air people at all at the moment, and I have no clue with there's any sort of method to the madness or if they're just playing whatever the hell they want like their library was set to random.

So, I'm now optimistic about TV. I'm hoping that somehow a channel will magically grow and it'll show just awesome stuffs. But for now I wait patiently exploring the adventure of TV.

MUSIC!!

One of the new channels that my TV has recently randomly grown brought this to me.



Alright, that's it with the beginning of the whiskey tango foxtrot portion of the week. See you on the foxtrot.