If time is money and you have more time, Do you need more money?

Monday, October 29, 2012

Tragedy At Sea

The sinking of the HMS Bounty... Hurricane Sandy has taken it's toll on the infamous ship and crew.
see story here...CNN


Photo from s/v Velocir's site


Amelia and Grant from s/v Velocir (Albin Vega of course) have a long history with this ship.  You can read of some of their adventures on their site  Velocir, Raptor on the Prowl

To all our Family and Friends in Sandy's path BE SAFE, 

Wes and Ayrton

ps  tonight we watch the 1962 film "Mutiny on the Bounty" with Marlon Brando

Saturday, October 20, 2012

We Don't Need No Education

It has been a while since I have posted a Floyd quote.   This one is spot on.



We don't need no education 
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teacher! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

(A bunch of kids singing) We don't need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teacher! Leave us kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.



But to get to the point I really wanted to make today...  
Down load and read this book!


You can find reviews all over the net but the simplistic evaluation would be...

SHEEP!

Your children are being herded and intellectually slaughtered systematically by the machine!  


If you don't think you have the time for a whole book read the following.

Before reading, please set your irony detector to the on position. If you find yourself inclined to dismiss the below as paranoid, you should know that the design behind the current American school system is very well-documented historically, in published writings of dizzying cynicism by such well-known figures as Horace Mann and Andrew Carnegie.




The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher
by John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year, 1991 


Call me Mr. Gatto, please. Twenty-six years ago, having nothing better to do, I tried my hand at schoolteaching. My license certifies me as an instructor of English language and literature, but that isn't what I do at all. What I teach is school, and I win awards doing it.

Teaching means many different things, but six lessons are common to schoolteaching from Harlem to Hollywood. You pay for these lessons in more ways than you can imagine, so you might as well know what they are:

The first lesson I teach is: "Stay in the class where you belong." I don't know who decides that my kids belong there but that's not my business. The children are numbered so that if any get away they can be returned to the right class. Over the years the variety of ways children are numbered has increased dramatically, until it is hard to see the human being under the burden of the numbers each carries. Numbering children is a big and very profitable business, though what the business is designed to accomplish is elusive.

In any case, again, that's not my business. My job is to make the kids like it -- being locked in together, I mean -- or at the minimum, endure it. If things go well, the kids can't imagine themselves anywhere else; they envy and fear the better classes and have contempt for the dumber classes. So the class mostly keeps itself in good marching order. That's the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place.

Nevertheless, in spite of the overall blueprint, I make an effort to urge children to higher levels of test success, promising eventual transfer from the lower-level class as a reward. I insinuate that the day will come when an employer will hire them on the basis of test scores, even though my own experience is that employers are (rightly) indifferent to such things. I never lie outright, but I've come to see that truth and [school]teaching are incompatible.

The lesson of numbered classes is that there is no way out of your class except by magic. Until that happens you must stay where you are put.

The second lesson I teach kids is to turn on and off like a light switch. I demand that they become totally involved in my lessons, jumping up and down in their seats with anticipation, competing vigorously with each other for my favor. But when the bell rings I insist that they drop the work at once and proceed quickly to the next work station. Nothing important is ever finished in my class, nor in any other class I know of.

The lesson of bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything? Bells are the secret logic of schooltime; their argument is inexorable; bells destroy past and future, converting every interval into a sameness, as an abstract map makes every living mountain and river the same even though they are not. Bells inoculate each undertaking with indifference.

The third lesson I teach you is to surrender your will to a predestined chain of command. Rights may be granted or withheld, by authority, without appeal. As a schoolteacher I intervene in many personal decisions, issuing a Pass for those I deem legitimate, or initiating a disciplinary confrontation for behavior that threatens my control. My judgments come thick and fast, because individuality is trying constantly to assert itself in my classroom. Individuality is a curse to all systems of classification, a contradiction of class theory.

Here are some common ways it shows up: children sneak away for a private moment in the toilet on the pretext of moving their bowels; they trick me out of a private instant in the hallway on the grounds that they need water. Sometimes free will appears right in front of me in children angry, depressed or exhilarated by things outside my ken. Rights in such things cannot exist for schoolteachers; only privileges, which can be withdrawn, exist.

The fourth lesson I teach is that only I determine what curriculum you will study. (Rather, I enforce decisions transmitted by the people who pay me). This power lets me separate good kids from bad kids instantly. Good kids do the tasks I appoint with a minimum of conflict and a decent show of enthusiasm. Of the millions of things of value to learn, I decide what few we have time for. The choices are mine. Curiosity has no important place in my work, only conformity.

Bad kids fight against this, of course, trying openly or covertly to make decisions for themselves about what they will learn. How can we allow that and survive as schoolteachers? Fortunately there are procedures to break the will of those who resist.

This is another way I teach the lesson of dependency. Good people wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. This is the most important lesson of all, that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives. It is no exaggeration to say that our entire economy depends upon this lesson being learned. Think of what would fall apart if kids weren't trained in the dependency lesson: The social-service businesses could hardly survive, including the fast-growing counseling industry; commercial entertainment of all sorts, along with television, would wither if people remembered how to make their own fun; the food services, restaurants and prepared-food warehouses would shrink if people returned to making their own meals rather than depending on strangers to cook for them. Much of modern law, medicine, and engineering would go too -- the clothing business as well -- unless a guaranteed supply of helpless people poured out of our schools each year. We've built a way of life that depends on people doing what they are told because they don't know any other way. For God's sake, let's not rock that boat!

In lesson five I teach that your self-respect should depend on an observer's measure of your worth. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged. A monthly report, impressive in its precision, is sent into students' homes to spread approval or to mark exactly -- down to a single percentage point -- how dissatisfied with their children parents should be. Although some people might be surprised how little time or reflection goes into making up these records, the cumulative weight of the objective- seeming documents establishes a profile of defect which compels a child to arrive at a certain decisions about himself and his future based on the casual judgment of strangers.

Self-evaluation -- the staple of every major philosophical system that ever appeared on the planet -- is never a factor in these things. The lesson of report cards, grades, and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents, but must rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to be told what they are worth.

In lesson six I teach children that they are being watched. I keep each student under constant surveillance and so do my colleagues. There are no private spaces for children; there is no private time. Class change lasts 300 seconds to keep promiscuous fraternization at low levels. Students are encouraged to tattle on each other, even to tattle on their parents. Of course I encourage parents to file their own child's waywardness, too.

I assign "homework" so that this surveillance extends into the household, where students might otherwise use the time to learn something unauthorized, perhaps from a father or mother, or by apprenticing to some wiser person in the neighborhood.

The lesson of constant surveillance is that no one can be trusted, that privacy is not legitimate. Surveillance is an ancient urgency among certain influential thinkers; it was a central prescription set down by Calvin in the Institutes, by Plato in the Republic, by Hobbes, by Comte, by Francis Bacon. All these childless men discovered the same thing: Children must be closely watched if you want to keep a society under central control.

It is the great triumph of schooling that among even the best of my fellow teachers, and among even the best parents, there is only a small number who can imagine a different way to do things. Yet only a very few lifetimes ago things were different in the United States: originality and variety were common currency; our freedom from regimentation made us the miracle of the world; social class boundaries were relatively easy to cross; our citizenry was marvelously confident, inventive, and able to do many things independently, to think for themselves. We were something, all by ourselves, as individuals.

It only takes about 50 contact hours to transmit basic literacy and math skills well enough that kids can be self-teachers from then on. The cry for "basic skills" practice is a smokescreen behind which schools pre-empt the time of children for twelve years and teach them the six lessons I've just taught you.

We've had a society increasingly under central control in the United States since just before the Civil War: the lives we lead, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, and the green highway signs we drive by from coast to coast are the products of this central control. So, too, I think, are the epidemics of drugs, suicide, divorce, violence, cruelty, and the hardening of class into caste in the U.S., products of the dehumanization of our lives, the lessening of individual and family importance that central control imposes.

Without a fully active role in community life you cannot develop into a complete human being. Aristotle taught that. Surely he was right; look around you or look in the mirror: that is the demonstration.

"School" is an essential support system for a vision of social engineering that condemns most people to be subordinate stones in a pyramid that narrows to a control point as it ascends. "School" is an artifice which makes such a pyramidal social order seem inevitable (although such a premise is a fundamental betrayal of the American Revolution). In colonial days and through the period of the early Republic we had no schools to speak of. And yet the promise of democracy was beginning to be realized. We turned our backs on this promise by bringing to life the ancient dream of Egypt: compulsory training in subordination for everybody. Compulsory schooling was the secret Plato reluctantly transmitted in the Republic when he laid down the plans for total state control of human life.

The current debate about whether we should have a national curriculum is phony; we already have one, locked up in the six lessons I've told you about and a few more I've spared you. This curriculum produces moral and intellectual paralysis, and no curriculum of content will be sufficient to reverse its bad effects. What is under discussion is a great irrelevancy.

None of this is inevitable, you know. None of it is impregnable to change. We do have a choice in how we bring up young people; there is no right way. There is no "international competition" that compels our existence, difficult as it is to even think about in the face of a constant media barrage of myth to the contrary. In every important material respect our nation is self-sufficient. If we gained a non-material philosophy that found meaning where it is genuinely located -- in families, friends, the passage of seasons, in nature, in simple ceremonies and rituals, in curiosity, generosity, compassion, and service to others, in a decent independence and privacy -- then we would be truly self-sufficient.

How did these awful places, these "schools", come about? As we know them, they are a product of the two "Red Scares" of 1848 and 1919, when powerful interests feared a revolution among our industrial poor, and partly they are the result of the revulsion with which old-line families regarded the waves of Celtic, Slavic, and Latin immigration -- and the Catholic religion -- after 1845. And certainly a third contributing cause can be found in the revulsion with which these same families regarded the free movement of Africans through the society after the Civil War.

Look again at the six lessons of school. This is training for permanent underclasses, people who are to be deprived forever of finding the center of their own special genius. And it is training shaken loose from its original logic: to regulate the poor. Since the 1920s the growth of the well-articulated school bureaucracy, and the less visible growth of a horde of industries that profit from schooling exactly as it is, have enlarged schooling's original grasp to seize the sons and daughters of the middle class.

Is it any wonder Socrates was outraged at the accusation that he took money to teach? Even then, philosophers saw clearly the inevitable direction the professionalization of teaching would take, pre-empting the teaching function that belongs to all in a healthy community; belongs, indeed, most clearly to yourself, since nobody else cares as much about your destiny. Professional teaching tends to another serious error. It makes things that are inherently easy to learn, like reading, writing, and arithmetic, difficult -- by insisting they be taught by pedagogical procedures.

With lessons like the ones I teach day after day, is it any wonder we have the national crisis we face today? Young people indifferent to the adult world and to the future; indifferent to almost everything except the diversion of toys and violence? Rich or poor, schoolchildren cannot concentrate on anything for very long. They have a poor sense of time past and to come; they are mistrustful of intimacy (like the children of divorce they really are); they hate solitude, are cruel, materialistic, dependent, passive, violent, timid in the face of the unexpected, addicted to distraction.

All the peripheral tendencies of childhood are magnified to a grotesque extent by schooling, whose hidden curriculum prevents effective personality development. Indeed, without exploiting the fearfulness, selfishness, and inexperience of children our schools could not survive at all, nor could I as a certified schoolteacher.

"Critical thinking" is a term we hear frequently these days as a form of training which will herald a new day in mass schooling. It certainly will, if it ever happens. No common school that actually dared teach the use of dialectic, heuristic, and other tools of free minds could last a year without being torn to pieces.

Institutional schoolteachers are destructive to children's development. Nobody survives the Six-Lesson Curriculum unscathed, not even the instructors. The method is deeply and profoundly anti-educational. No tinkering will fix it. In one of the great ironies of human affairs, the massive rethinking that schools require would cost so much less than we are spending now that it is not likely to happen. First and foremost, the business I am in is a jobs project and a contract-letting agency. We cannot afford to save money, not even to help children.

At the pass we've come to historically, and after 26 years of teaching, I must conclude that one of the only alternatives on the horizon for most families is to teach their own children at home. Small, de- institutionalized schools are another. Some form of free-market system for public schooling is the likeliest place to look for answers. But the near impossibility of these things for the shattered families of the poor, and for too many on the fringes of the economic middle class, foretell that the disaster of Six-Lesson Schools is likely to continue.

After an adult lifetime spent in teaching school I believe the method of schooling is the only real content it has. Don't be fooled into thinking that good curricula or good equipment or good teachers are the critical determinants of your son and daughter's schooltime. All the pathologies we've considered come about in large measure because the lessons of school prevent children from keeping important appointments with themselves and their families, to learn lessons in self-motivation, perseverance, self-reliance, courage, dignity and love -- and, of course, lessons in service to others, which are among the key lessons of home life.

Thirty years ago these things could still be learned in the time left after school. But television has eaten most of that time, and a combination of television and the stresses peculiar to two-income or single-parent families have swallowed up most of what used to be family time. Our kids have no time left to grow up fully human, and only thin-soil wastelands to do it in.

A future is rushing down upon our culture which will insist that all of us learn the wisdom of non-material experience; this future will demand, as the price of survival, that we follow a pace of natural life economical in material cost. These lessons cannot be learned in schools as they are. School is like starting life with a 12-year jail sentence in which bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I should know.  - John Gatto, Whole Earth Review





Sunday, October 14, 2012

Quick photo update


 Bow restoration in progress

 Sushi Salad

 The Fisher King loves Ospreys and is loving his new camera

Fisher King's Queen Helmet Conch Shell 

W


Life And True Stories In The Emerald City




Marathon dinghy dock

While in the local marine store the other day I overheard a conversation that went like this.

Chatter among several people with the realization that the man at the counter was now the new management of a local marina.

Girl Friday: "Are you going to offer a dinghy dock?"
Man at the counter, "What is a dinghy dock? Is that where all the freeloaders in the sailboats come and steal you stuff?   Those people...  well no offense to you of course."
Girl Friday, "A dinghy dock is where we pay to come to use the showers, get water and a safe place to leave the dinghy."

After a couple more tries she just gives up and the man leaves saying.
 "Those people just need to stay away."

*Cruisers take note there is only one actual dinghy dock in PC, it is at the city marina.  Landing anywhere else could end up in shackles and buckshot.

Welcome to PC
W

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Cats and Waves and the damage they can do

How many projects do you see?

We are finally tackling the damage done by the week in Nixon Bay and the Wayward Catamaran

  • Forestay chain plate currently mailed off to Steve B. Catamaran damage
  • New riser for anchor roller as the other one suffered shock in Nixon Bay
  • Repair anchor roller  Nixon Bay
  • Construct new bow rail  Catamaran damage
  • Rebuild roller furling from Catamaran damage
  • Control block for roller furling line  prevous angle incorrect
  • Replace forestay  age 
  • Replace lifelines age
  • Replace chocks  Nixon Bay 
  • Replace hull to deck joint screws  age and I just saw the bottom of the bolts!
  • Paint topsides  getting scuffed up

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - October 2012

The Good  West Systems Epoxy

With the project list under full steam ahead,  Epoxy and fiberglass are a daily experience.  Somewhere in the learning curve perhaps at the end we will have a new mount for the anchor, a propane locker, a hard dodger and a super secret project.   During this time I am getting familiar with the West Systems Epoxy that has been riding around for the last couple years waiting on us to get time to do these projects.  One thing negative so far is that the six10 tubes are only 1/3 full!  Other than that all else seems as expected.  Stay tuned for a whole blog page on a couple of those projects.  With step by step photos.



The Bad - Raymarine Autotiller and Raymarine Warranties!

RAYMARINE ST-1000
I'll try to keep this one short.  Raymarine has refused to warrant our auto-tiller!  It came with a two year warranty and was purchased in March 2011!  They refused to warrant it due to water intrusion.  It would appear that water entered the unit through the button or the LCD display.  If you have moisture in the display beware the gathering gloom, oh such impending doom.  Please keep in mind when it rains take your damn Raymarine Auto-tillers down below because they are not engineered to withstand the elements with in which they were designed to do.   Please keep this poorly engineered POS in a secure location like the store with which you are thinking of buying one!  It will not perform in the world of cruising!  This is the second one I know of personally that has failed due to this reason.  So in recap: DO NOT BUY THIS POS!  If you already own one please practice safe tillering and use protection.  

Anyone want to buy a Raymarine Cricket Bat?



The Ugly DHL's drive-by looting!  For those of you that don't know DHL they became the German Post office a few years back.  They also made an assault on Fed-ex and UPS here in the US.  In trying this they partnered with the USPS to deliver their rural packages,  Suddenly the cost of shipping with the USPS went up drastically and we found the new Flat Rate Boxes at the USPS, A DHL favorite! (Shipping from Germany to USA almost doubled when they took over the Luftpost.)  So what does this have to do with anything?  MONEY OUT OF A CRUISERS POCKET.  I prefer Fed-ex over the counter! Always cheaper and includes $100 of insurance but, this town is not FedEx friendly.

In an effort to buy a new tiller pilot, NO NOT A DAMN RAYMARINE!, we have sold some of the items we are not using on the boat.  First you must decide if it is economy or priority,  economy often only saves 10% and takes twice as long.  Then you must decide if the delivery guy tosses it out with out care, he electronically verifies, the recipient signs or insurance.  Then you must pay the exorbitant amount but their credit card machines never work so you have to hand it to an employee that makes 3 times minimum wage.  Then it is handled by the poor chaps only making 2 times or more than minimum wage.  Then if something goes wrong and it does about 5-10% of the time in my experience you have to talk to someone making 4 times minimum wage.  With all those pensions, holidays and other paid days off, no wonder they charge so much and are still loosing money.

Here is a recent event:
9-15  All decisions made and package sent off with a tracking number with hopes that all would be good.  ($13.80 to send a fishing reel)  USPS expected delivery date 9-18!
9-21 As of 9/21 I have not recieved the 750 reel yet.Did you ship it?? I responded after checking the online status and finding "out for delivery" I told him to check with his post office. (#1)
9-22 Over the next week we exchanged emails multiple times, Tried to file a lost package at both ends and were told "ONLINE ONLY" to file the complaint! Hmm question time: "What if I don't have a computer?" "YOu have to go to the library!" ""What if I don't know how to use a computer?" "I guess you are out of...long pause... I guess the supervisor could help you. We get back to the boat and finally find a web page with an 800 number AND DIRECTIONS TO FILE AT THE POST OFFICE AND HOW TO MAIL ONE IN." Called the 800 number and made the missing package complaint. (#4) "We will call you within 24 hours". They did! They called and said the "the local post office in PA will not answer. Here is the number you can call..." Called that office and repeated the whole issue (#5) again. "We dont have it here are some number to the delivery station and local post office! WTF (#6 &7) I was given one more number that I could repeat myself once again. (#8) Called back the next day and repeated the story 3 more times (up to #11) plus a few calls I know I made but don't remember at this moment. So on Friday the buyer and I decide to wait one more week HE IS BEING GREAT ABOUT THIS!  He even chased down his local delivery guy to see if it was with him. Are you getting confused and feel like you are going in circles?
9-29 On Saturday the bar code label, hopefully with the package still attached and the reel inside undamaged was attempted to be delivered and he was not at home.
10-1 Guy from #7 explaining myself calls and says if mysteriously appeared Saturday and he didn't know why! AT LEAST THIS ONE PERSON FOLLOWED THROUGH. At 4pm central time I recieved an email stating..." I got the reel today the box was opened but the reel is intact and working properly."

This is the third package in the last year that has been a pain. One to Stewart, FL that made it to Stewart and then to Atlanta before we could catch it and turn it around. One to CA that was delivered to the wrong address just because it was the same company name and easier for the delivery guy.

Could you imagine if you were in cruise mode and had to deal with this? It should have ended with the online complaint! They should have handled the issue from that point through completion of the problem. Maybe they need to make more money to give a damn.


w