my pointless musing on net neutrality

One thing I notice among the arguments against net neutrality is the suggestion that sites like Google or You Tube should pay for the bandwidth that they use. But, I'm guessing that they already pay. Maybe they have some super secret free internet bargain, but I'm guessing not. I'm also guessing that they do indeed have the internet at Google and that their employees don't do the work at the office and then download it at home. I pay a certain company for my share of the internet, so what I'm wondering is, why should we now all have to pay more?

I once worked in a restaurant that once had a fire in the hood vents. In addition to the fire department and the loss in time and sales, the place had to pay to have the vents cleaned out and fixed after finding the problem that caused the fire. There were problems with other equipment, as will happen in restaurants, that required repair or replacement. But when these problems were encountered, the management didn't raise the prices to pay for them. The restaurant had to find a way to take care of the problem while still providing the customer with what they expected.

It seems to me that the telcos are tired of paying their part of the deal. They can't provide their service without some amount of work, an example of which is running cable lines. The argument is, in my opinion, that the telcos want to charge people because they have to update their hardware. To keep pace with technology and the spread of the human population, they want to make extra money for doing something that is integral to their business.

If you help me pay for the fryers, I'll open a restaurant, and you can come buy food there. The big difference here is that I have options when it comes to restaurants. And once I'm in the restaurant I still have options. If the corporations want more money, maybe they should worry more about their service than what they can manage to charge and how many people will pay twice.

But that's just how I see it.

yyyeeeeessssssss!!!

I actually got a visitor here at the ol' blog searching the words Sweden and rat tail. I wish people would comment once in a while. I get really random visitors and would love the feedback. I'm not sure I could take the comments though, because they might be mean or harsh or disagreeable. I might also point out that I get regular visits from searches for Myspace and evil, and now they have two posts that will come up.

why schooling when we don't?

Why this bothers me I can't say, but I just don't like any of the terms used to describe what we homeschoolers do that involve the word "school" as any part of it. I honestly can't think of a single word or word combination that I actually like. Home education sounds like a more strict version of homeschooling, sort of a fixation on that "body of knowledge" that we are all supposed to leave school with. Unschooling as a word just shouldn't exist as it is a single word oxymoron. Life learning is a suggestion that Momma came up with, but we aren't hippies, and she agreed.

Honestly, I'm sort of anal about things sometimes, so it just may be that there isn't any thing to call it that I'd be happy with. I suppose that living is about as close as it gets. Maybe being a family and growing and hopefully maturing. But even those tend toward snobbishness as answers and turn us back to those granola hippy moms.

Whatever you call it, a main motivation for this thing we do with our kids instead of the school system is to give those kids a better start. Regardless of our political and religious drives, I think we could all agree that giving the kids a better start is at the end of many of our reasons.

So maybe that's my new answer. Maybe it will go something like this.

Random Person: So, where do you go to school?

Big Brother: We don't go to school.

Random person: Oh?

Me: No, we're giving them a head start by doing the job right.

Random Person: Hmmm?

Me: Don't worry about it. We homeschool.

Random Person: Ooooohhhh . . .(confused look) . . . so you go to school at home?

Me: Ya know, the very concept of school is . . .actually, yeah, we homeschool. We go to school at home.