I am a very good teacher, in that I explain things well but I have found that I am a much better teacher of intelligent people than I am of the average. I lack patience when people don't learn quickly and I have a hard time thinking of ways to simplify the material for others because it already looks pretty simple to me. Contrast that with my older brother, a smart man but not gifted, and he's better at teaching a wider variety of kids (he's a football coach, I do a lot of writing critiques/coaching) and would make a better teacher for most classes. Being more able to understand where the students are having trouble and why they're having troubles can be very advantageous while trying to reach them. If my kids turn out to be like me, then I want someone like me to teach them, if they're more average then I want someone like him to teach them.

And Robin's explanation of the school system in Canada does tend to accord with my memories. I had gone to school with mostly the same kids for 12 years, and the ones who had the highest grades at the end weren't very intelligent. I was barely passing but if they were having problems they'd come to me and I'd show them how to do it, or what the answer was. There were probably four really gifted people in our school (of about 400), two had middling marks that were just good enough for University but neither could go, one thrived in the system and got great marks, and the smartest one, the genius, got poor marks in some classes but made up for it with incredible, scholarship level, marks in other classes. Only one out of the four made the top ten. The system wasn't set up to teach those kids, it was set up to teach the above average and average kids.

If Obama says yes then he's following McCain's lead. If he says no he's putting his campaign ahead of the economic health of the country. A clever move on McCain's part.

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Maybe. Or maybe it isn't a ploy at all. After all, voters did elect McCain to serve in the Senate. Maybe he's just doing the job he was elected to do.

I don't think Obama has anything to lose by agreeing to postpone the debate. There are actually more important things than the presidential race, and this lending mess may very well be one of them.

http://www.cubeecraft.com/election08.html

Make your own Obama and McCain cubes. 

 This just in :

A McCain senior adviser said that Obama called McCain early Wednesday morning to asking a joint statement of "shared principles and conditions" for the bailout proposal.

An Obama campaign source confirmed the call and said that McCain returned his call six hours later, and accepted the concept and suggested the two of them return to Washington to join the negotiations. The source says that Obama told him that he would do that only if negotiators saw it as useful.

According to the Obama source, soon after they ended the call, McCain announced he was suspending his campaign and returning to Washington.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/24/campaign.wrap/index.h tml

Wow he said he wanted both parties to come together to solve this problem, way to take credit for something he didn't even come up with. But then again he is the candidate of "Change" .

Maybe. Or maybe it isn't a ploy at all. After all, voters did elect McCain to serve in the Senate. Maybe he's just doing the job he was elected to do

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But he hasn't been doing the job he was elected to. Neither has Obama, Clinton and the other Senators running for president. As of August 31st McCain has missed 63.8% of the votes in the 110th congress and Obama 45.5%. I'm voting for the guy but I think that's a terrible record especially considering how few days Congress is in session. He should've resigned and let the Governor of Arizona apoint someone who will do the job fulltime.

It seems campaigning legislators often miss loads of votes - this is also how they get the labels of "most liberal" or "most conservative" due to the limitations of the metric used.

If something is going to pass or fail by, say, 100 votes, then I don't expect someone campaigning for president to return to vote on it.  If they do it's likely for political reasons, to demonstrate their opposition or support.

Whew... McCain shows he can't multi-task... Palin isn't allowed to speak to reporters and has to be protected from bullies like Joe Biden...

Do... do the republicans realize what office these people are running for?  Does McCain think that once he's President that he can only deal with one thing at a time?  This isn't Bush ignoring Katrina to have a birthday party or read a book to kids while we're under a terrorist attack - debating the issues, especially at this time (oh, by the way - Republicans?  Can we stop tut tutting and saying nothing is wrong?  Even your candidate is admitting there's a problem) is very important.  Obviously we need to hammer out a plan to prevent our economy from going the way of All-Flash, but there's going to be an election in November and the public has to be ready for it.  And does Palin think that she won't have to deal with tough talk when dealing with Iran?  With North Korea?  Pakistan?  She and her supporters are afraid that Biden will be too mean to her?

Seriously.  Step away from what you're doing for a moment and look at this with clear eyes.  This is just apalling behavior.

McPalin acts like they're running for student council.

Obama says no.

So much for "American First"

No, I wasn't referring to you, Myers.  Earlier in this thread, when it was suggested that things were bad economically, there was tut-tutting about how, oh, pshaw, we're tired of hearing you people complain.

Not sure why you'd assume I was talking about you.

Hmmm.  McCain's Chief of Staff is gay.

http://miamiherald.typepad.com/gaysouthflorida/2008/09/gay-b loggers-ou.html