Turns Out Mr. Wikileaks is Mentally Unstable

[MikeH]

It's true throughout FCPS, and probably all of Virginia, and it was true for the school I attended in Tennessee.

Naturally there are going to be times when teachers don't follow the rules but what the **** do you want? There's 300 million people in the US, do you think they're all angels?

No pledge = no opportunity for them to break the rules and bully kids.

[MikeH]

One last point for the "cult of state" idiots--we aren't the country with a monarch that is a "symbol of the state and the unity of the people" etc.

Except most of us would rather get rid of her as a head of state too. And we certainly wouldn't pledge allegiance to her, symbolic or not.

[C0ckney]

speak for yourself mike. most of us, meaning the british people, would rather keep the queen as head of state.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy_of_the_United_Kingdom

Today, 16 of the 53 independent states within the Commonwealth, including the United Kingdom, remain Commonwealth realms and share the same monarch. The present monarch, Elizabeth II succeeded her father, George VI, in 1952. Like her recent predecessors, Elizabeth II continues to function as a constitutional monarch. During her reign, there has been some support for the republican movement, especially due to negative publicity associated with the Royal Family (for instance, following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales).[82] Nevertheless, more recent polls show that a large majority of the British public support the continuation of the monarchy.

[C0ckney]

from a 2009 ICM poll

ICM have carried out a poll for the BBC in connection with Evan Harris’s current Private Members Bill, which would put men and women on equal footing in succession to the crown and would remove the current laws that prevent the crown passing to anyone married to a Catholic (though not the laws preventing a Catholic succeeding to the throne themselves).
81% of respondents thought that an heir to the throne should be able to marry a Catholic and still become monarch, with 15% disagreeing. 89% would support women and men being treated equally in the succession.

On the broader issue of the monarchy, 76% of people said they would like the monarchy to continue after the present Queen, while 18% said they would prefer a Republic.

[MikeH]

Clarification: I only meant most of us who were arguing in this thread that the pledge of allegiance was stupid.

[C0ckney]

ah ok. fair enough.

[MikeH]

BTW. We've had lots of defending it on the basis that "it's not as bad as you are making out", "no-one pays attention to it anyway", "you don't have to say it" etc.

We still haven't had a single positive argument for why it's a good thing and shouldn't just be consigned to history as a worthless stupid idea.

[MOBIUS]

Exactly, if it's that crap in the first place, surely it is a cultural anachronism that needs to be got rid of anyway - just like keeping hold of Imperial Units and Fahrenheit - how terribly inefficient and backwards thinking...

[MikeH]

Like our road signs.

[C0ckney]

i did some tests at a hospital recently and they asked me questions about my height and weight etc. which i could only answer in feet and inches, and stones and pounds. which confused the brasilian guys a lot!

they even used to tell me at the hospital in wales in metric, and i'd always be like what's that in english please, because i have no concept of those things in metric.

[MikeH]

I know mine. 187.5 cm, 85 kilos.

[C0ckney]

that's what i'm talking about, i had to convert that into imperial to get an idea in my head of how much you weigh and how tall you are! i suppose i will become used to it after some time. i'm starting to think of distance in kilometres now at least...

[MikeH]

If you just learn your own height and weight in metric it's a good benchmark

[MOBIUS]

How old are you? I always got the feeling that the change over occurred at some weird point I can't really remember, however if you're in your 30s and 40s, you usually have some sort of sliding scale of aptitude with both, depending on which measure is used. I'm in some sort of weird cross over depending on:

Temperature: 100% Celsius, haven't much of a clue about Fahrenheit apart from a few rudimentary things like freezing and human body temp etc

Distance: Completely 'multilingual'

Height/Weight: Weirdly mixed up!

[MikeH]

Depends if you measure my age in Metric or Imperial.