The Avenger

I don't really see it as treating symptoms rather than creating a cure (I'm a pessimist but even I don't think companies don't want to cure you because it's more profitable to continulally treat your symptoms). I see it as treating something that lots of people have vs. treating something not may people have. Pharma wants to treat things with a large customer base - athritis pain, high cholesterol, ED. These drugs will sell and make money (again - not blasting anyone for making a profit). Pharma doesn't want to treat things like liver failure due to some sort of enzyme deficiency that only 1000 people are treated for in a year. The bigger picture is how do you get pharma to create effective drugs that can do tremendous good for a limited number of people at the same time they are working on another hair growth pill that could sell like crazy if effective? In a free market system with for-profit companies this is hard to do - there's got to be a better way.

That's my point. if she was constantly judged on "merit" with merit being defined as how her kids tested or otherwise succeeded she would have been seen as a good teacher last year and as a not so good teacher this year. I seriously doubt that your wife went from being a good teacher to a fair or poor teacher in the course of a single year - she's the same good teachers she's always been.

R&D costs are inclusive of the FDA approval process. No dobt its expensive, but pharma would have you believe that the vast majority of it's costs are R&D and that's simply not true.

My point exactly - there is no way in the U.S. education system to shift resources to "smart" kids and put others in a corner. You might be able to track them (and I think its great that a kid without book smarts is given skills to be a very successful mechanic), but you can't push other kids into a corner like they can do elsewhere - that's un-American!

yes, but I'd venture to guess that the disparity in spending between kids on a vocational track and a higher education track is much wider in Japan than it is in the U.S. In Japan they can pretty much put those kids in a corner and not give them much - no way you're allowed to do that in the U.S. You can train somebody to to be a mechanic or a hair dresser, but you can't give them 1/10th the funds you give to the kids taking AP courses.

I still say your wife, in her inner city school teaching kids of parents who nevr got an education or have low-paying jobs, comes out as a "worse teacher" over 5 years than an average teacher in Scarsdale who gets kids of doctors and lawyers. It's the quality of the student that test scores measure, not necessarily the quality of the teacher.

That sounds great, but when they come to you and tell you that they've evaluated YOUR 6 year old and determined he's headed for factory work, you'd go nuts (and you should). The reality that some people have more inherent capability to learn does not jive with the American ideal of equal opporunity for all, so there is no ability to funnel spending to kids who will ultimately learn more.

So what's the standard by which teachers will be judged? I hear all the time that teachers should be judged on merit - but how do you determine who's a good teacher and who's not? Most people say test scores of the kids, but that doesn't make much sense to me and can be harmful. Now I'm sure your wife is a good teacher, and bless her if she teaches in the inner city. If she did her best to teach her kids but they weren't particularly good students (after school mom/dad weren't home so they hung out on the corner and got into trouble, or there was drug/alcohol abuse in the family, or there was abuse at home, etc.), her kids might not test so well. Is your wife suddenly a bad teacher? If she moved to a job at a great school in the suburbs and her kids tested 50% higher than her city students is she suddenly a 50% better teacher? People love to talk about teacher standards, but it doesn't exist - you can only teach what your given. Bad teachers teaching good kids will do better than good teachers with challenging kids. What it does if push everyone to want to teach is good schools and abandons inner city schools where nobody wants to teach challenging kids.

Dollars per capita isn't a very helpful statistic at all - you simply take all the money spent on education as a nation and divide it by the number of students, as if each kid got an exactly equal portion of funds - you and I both know that's not true. In affluent suburbs the kids are getting substantially more resources than kids in inner cities or on indian reservations. The have better facilities, more computers, and can offer a wider range of programs (how many inner city schools offer Latin or AP courses?). By contrast, many schools in NYC still heat their bulding with COAL - where the hell do you even buy coal these days? Somebody's job at the school is to shovel coal into the bolier as was done 100 years ago. I think you wlso have to take into account how other nations track their students. In Japn from very early on you are put on a track to go on to higher education very early. If you show promise at age 6 you get put on a track to go to the best universities in japan and you get the education spending that goes with that. If you don't show promise early you are tracked to learn how to be a factory worker for Mitsubishi and the system doesn't spend as much educating you. Per capita figures assume that everyone gets the same equal share of education spending - that's simply not true.

Looks like you're completely absolving parents from any responsibility to teach their kids or foster a home environment where education is valued. Yes sir, it's all the teachers - they don't do their job and that's why my kid is stupid. Johhny doesn't know how to read because he's got a bad teacher, not because his parents let him roam the streets after school instead of doing his homework. By your logic, inner city schools must just be filled with terrible teachers because the kids test so poorly. It has nothing to do with the fact that these kids have no home life and nobody making sure kids are going to school, doing their homework and staying out of the trouble. Kids in affluent suburbs do better because they have better teachers, not because they have good parental support and come from homes where Dad's a doctor and Mom's a lawyer and education is valued. If only we could clone the teachers of Scarsdale and let them teach everyone...

So it's the schools/teachers that are clamoring to teach more and more topics? That's news to me....

Must be the same guy who knows somebody with a buddy who works in the Bills Pro Shop. Ralph doesn't make any major decisions without making sure the folks in retail merchandise sales know about it....

Drugs certainly are very expensive to develop and most new drugs never make it to market - they fail along the way. With all the trial and error of finding a target and then ensuring that the drug is safe enough for human use, you're talking tremendous R&D costs. That said, I just a saw a Frontline story on pharma. Did you know that R&D accounts for 13% of revenues for the average pharma company? By contrast, drug sales and marketing accounts for 16% of revenues - they actually spend more money selling their drugs than they do developing them. The truth is, as a business the drug companies want to come up with the drugs that will sell best. They want to sell Lipitor to millions of people who want to reduce their cholesterol rather than create a drug that can stop liver failure but is only used by a few thousand times a year. They end up creating Celebrex for arthritis when there's no proof that it works any better than OTC ibuprofin in treating arthritis pain. I'm not bashing the pharma companies for running a business, but you have to wonder how a free market economy governs the development of drugs for the good of society.

There are a number of things wrong with the education system today, but to lay all the blame at the feet of teachers, big government and the teachers unions in wrong. Here are some of the problems, as I see them: -Not enough parents care about their child's education. Many think they send their kids to school and they shouldn't have to particpate at all in their child's education. They don't help kids with homework, they may not even care if their kid does their homework. I believe the biggest reason a kid fails in school is that education is not valued or practiced at home. -Public schools have to educate EVERYONE. They don't get to select only those students who want to learn, come from families that understand and support education, and have the desire to learn. They have to take kids from all walks of life, including those kids who have much bigger concerns about learning (gangs, drugs, poverty, bad home situations, etc.). I don't think I'd have had a very successful education if I lived in poverty and went home to an abusive home every day. When you have to teach EVERYONE, this certainly brings down the average. -Ever wonder why the only government expenditure you actually get a vote on is the public school budget? You don't get to vote for the police, fire, town road budgets, do you? In a climate why people are tired of taxes they take the opportunity to vote down their taxes whenever they can. Add in people who feel that they shouldn't have to pay any school taxes because they don't have kids or don't have kids in public school, and you often have a hard time passing the budget. Funny how these same people complain about how class sizes are too big and the kids come out of the system stupid. -There seems to be a growing call to teach EVERYTHING in school. Your kid didn't learn about sex? The schools should have taught him. Kid doesn't know how to register to vote? School should have tagught him. It seem that the rule is that if the subject matter could be included in a book, the schools should teach it because "its book learning". There's only so much time in a day, folks - the schools can't teach your kid everything from how to wipe himself to how to do calculus. Are there bad teachers out there? - you bet. The teachers unions protect bad teachers because, well, they're union members. These things don't help. But to say that this is the fault of teachers is a slap in the face to every good teacher out there (and there are plenty) who works hard to make sure your kid is learning as much as he possibly can given the situation (hey, somebody's got to, right?).

Go for it, GW! Man, I am so looking forward to living amongst these idiots today. As in years past, they already awarded themselves a Super Bowl appearance and win. They're a good team, but let's not go overboard. Nobody in the AFC East challenged them this year, and they were far from unbeatable. They were seeded lower than Denver, playing at Denver and underdogs yesterday, yet the spin this morning (even by that national media - not just the local Boston press) is that this was a stunning upset. Give me a *&%! break! Denver was supposed to win and they did. Can the world stop the collective butt kissing of the Pats now?

Dear God, please don't let us bring in another podium on the basis of "a great interview"!

For the same reason we didn't upgrade the offensive line when we brought in a lead-footed veteran QB a few years earlier and let him get killed: the Bills want to play a certain style of game without regard to actually having the personnel to do it.

Wow - reasonable people differ on this, but because Jerry Sullivan writes that he likes Ted the ex-Bills DC must suck and Sullivan must be a tool. It's his opinion, and it looks like quite a few people here would like to see Ted back with the Bills. It's fine if you don't, but don't blame that on Jerry.

I wouldn't increase keepers until the start of a season - it probably would have changed they way some people drafted at the start. Take it from someone who's been a commish for 12 years - if you make a change like this now everyone will accuse you of changing the rules to give yourself an advantage (ie. - because you personally want to keep 5 or 6 guys you had this year). Changes have to be made at the start of a season, when everyone starts on even ground. Nutcrackers was AWOL since about week 4. I understand if there are extreme circumstances (illness, death in the family, etc.), but short of that there's no excuse to leave a dead team. I know some teams got easy wins because they were playing a dead team with bye players in the lineup - not fair to those of us who do show up. My vote is to can them.

hey, it worked in my Madden game....

Hey Rich - a couple of questions: -Keepers - still 3? And when do we have to declare our keepers? -Nutcrackers - who is taking over for them?

For the first time in 12 years of fantasy football, I was crushed in multiple league - I didn't come anywhere near the playoffs. Most of it was bad luck and injuries - I've never been hit so hard. On one team my QB was McNabb, my #1RB was McAllister and my best WR was Darrell Jackson - ouch! Lessons learned: -No matter how good a RB looks in Denver, never take a Broncos RB. You'll go insane watching him have 100+ yards and 2 TDs one week and lose the starting job to another guy the following week. -No matter how good or how much of a lock a TE or Team D is, don't spend anything to get one (you figure in a value based drafting strategy you'll take someone that will be significantly better than others at the same position so it will work out, but taht doesn't seem to hold true with TE and defenses). -Never draft a RB who everyone says will be the #1 guy unless the #2 and #3 guys are in wheelchairs. I got some good values on Deshaun Foster and Deuce Staley late, and went crazy watching them eat up spots on my roster while riding the pine for their teams. -Remember that the Bills o-line sucks and Willis won't live up to his fantasy potential until it improves. -If you play in multiple leagues, don't draft the same players. When McAllister went down early in the season I was toast in 2 leagues. -Understand that when you look at everyone's team after the draft, the people who you think drafted good squads will probably suck and the people who look weak will probably be battling for the money at the end. If you like your team after the draft be concerned. -If you put up the second most points in the league in any given week you almost certainly played the only team who could have beat you (and in fact did). -Life sucks when the Bills go 5-11 and your fantasy teams are terrible. You wonder why you like football in the first place.

Or Duff Man....

Yeah, but in Ireland they didn't resort to indiscriminate car bombings like those radical muslims - those people are animals with no repect for human life. Just shows that Christians are much better than people who practice savage religions. Oh wait...

But hey, we have a pro bowl punter - maybe we make our long snapper our franchise player?