State of the Union: “Government will concentrate on job creation.” They can concentrate on it all they want, they won’t do it. The data show that any government job creation will only be spin. Only those working in their own interest, motivated by profit, accomplishment, or both, ever create jobs. The government can only pretend. The net result will be job destruction. The government can never give a dollar to anyone it has not taken from someone else. To be as charitable as possible, this mistaken belief comes from substituting the INTEND for the DOES. Politics is all about INTEND.
The following is from an assignment in a grade 8 history class–verbatim.
“Who did the British North America Act protected?”
“Whose execution of aroused bitter feelings between English and French speaking?”
“For whom did the Canadian Surveyors appeared in the North West to divide the land.”
The first could be a typographical error. We all have those, but the other two…?
A teacher lost his job with the Mafia because he was always making people offers they couldn’t understand.
from the book: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:
4. Based on Studies Which Work
This shouldn’t have to be said, but it always needs to be said many times. What is the point of doing something which doesn’t work? Note the clumsy use of the Rhetorical Question Device. The based-on-effective principles criterion is a necessary condition which is almost always absent because of the political nature of most programs.
5. Contains Immediate Feedback to Both Programmer and Client
The programmer needs to know how he is doing at all times. The surest and most relevant way to tell is by how the client is doing. Immediate, Interim and Final Aims need to be set for every aspect of the program so everyone knows how he’s doing all the time.
6. High Rate of Behavior from Client This is particularly true in academic training where the student needs to have hundreds of facts and dozens of skills immediately available so that fluent behavior is possible. According to the majority of “experts” teaching in schools of education, the classic oxymoron, academic studies are the only activities in human endeavor in which basic skills are irrelevant and practicing them, harmful. According to studies in the real world, fluency is critical in most skills. 7. Contains Outcome Evaluation
A program is merely an intention without results. Without results, activity is that most dreaded of all things, a polgram, the supreme manifestation of man’s ability to delude himself and others.
Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies
