"The catering company changed its policy due to customer requests. The "customer" was that particular office cafeteria, monsanto employees specifically, who didn't want it served there. Swamps, I don't read that in the article. According to the article, the owners of the catering company made the decision. The article doesn't state the decision was based on any customer preference. To wit: "Sutcliffe Catering, owned by the Granada Group, said it had taken the decision "to remove, as far as practicable, GM soya and maize from all food products served in our restaurant." Notice at the end of the article it says "now it appears that even Monsanto's own catering firm has no confidence in this new technology." (emphasis added) It doesn't say anything about Monsanto's employees. It appears it was purely the decision of the catering firm. I can't imagine Friends of Earth would let it slide by if Monsanto's own employees requested non-GMO food. I've reprinted the full article below: "Monsanto, the biggest promoter of genetically modified food, was hoist with its own petar when it was disclosed that it has a staff canteen in which GM produce is banned. The firm running the canteen at Monsanto's pharmaceuticals factory at High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, serves only GM-free meals, Friends of the Earth said. In a notice in the canteen, Sutcliffe Catering, owned by the Granada Group, said it had taken the decision "to remove, as far as practicable, GM soya and maize from all food products served in our restaurant. We have taken the above steps to ensure that you, the customer, can feel confident in the food we serve." Monsanto confirmed the position. "Yes, this is the case, and it is because we believe in choice," said the company's spokesman, Tony Coombes. But employees at Monsanto's agribusiness plant at Cambridge were happy to eat GM produce, he said. "The notice in the restaurant there says some products may contain GMOs [genetically modified organisms] - because our staff are happy to eat food sprayed with fewer chemicals." Monsanto says crops engineered to be tolerant of its own weedkillers need less pesticide, but critics say that though the dosage may be less, the impact on the environment of these pesticides is much greater. Adrian Bebb, Friends of the Earth's food campaigner, said: "The public has made its concerns about GM ingredients very clear - now it appears that even Monsanto's own catering firm has no confidence in this new technology."

No by the way you just described your system its the same. Sorry to disagree, but the lift the head and slap the gasket mentality is often rewarded north of the border too. In both countries the same double standard applies, get away with cutting the corners and the tech is a hero, have one fail and the tech gets to do it over again for free. Have more than one fail and the tech is considered a hack and will find himself out on the street, while the guy in the stalll next to him continued doing the repair the same way. I'll agree that someone who isn't fast enough is gone in a hurry, but its more like if the tech takes four hours to do a three hour job consistently, even if he/she never has a comeback, they will find themselves on thin ice. I definitely know how it works and how it is twisted into something evil that it was never intended to be. In one line you state "You don't know how it works. the dealer pays us. NOT the customer. I've eaten alot of time. It happens to all of us. The customer DOSEN'T pay extra. I loose it on my pay." Your making my point with that sentence. As far as Ford goes, I love my Fords. But ten years ago they were among the greatest abusers of flat rate. There is a website, flatrate.com devoted to technicians who were fighting the O.E's over fraudulent labor times. At one point Ford would pay just over eight hours for the R&R of a long block in an F150 4X4. To get the time under 12Hrs top techs figured out that removing the cab allowed for sufficient access to everything that it was faster than following the book. Amazingly, removing the cab shaved about four hours off of the time "doing it by the book" BTW. In a direct challenge, the techs were going to assign a technician to do a particular repair from a known group of technicians, and from a general range of repairs of which known labor operations applied. Ford could pick anyone off of their time study team and then once it was set, we got to announce what the actual repair that would be performed would be. The specifics of the challenge were that both the labor study tech, and the mastertech would learn what repair was to be done, and then they both would do that repair simultaneously. In the challenge it was stated that the chosen master technician would complete the repair correctly, while noting the labor operation time was unreachable because it was too low. But it was also stated that the master tech would complete the repair faster than the time study technician. Logic dictated that if the labor time was correct and fair, the time study person should be able to do the repair in that amount of time allotted. After all, this would be the person who created that labor time. If the time study mechanic completed the repair within the time allotted, whether the master tech beat his time or not it was to be accepted by the techs challenging the labor ops system that they would drop their complaints. If the techs won the challenge as described, then Ford had to correct their labor times to at least the times that were routinely achieved by master technicians from all around the country. There was one more stipulation, the challenge was to be viewable live on the web, ten years ago this was easily within Fords capability. I was one of the technicians that the Ford techs would put on the floor for some specific repairs, I was also the author of "The Challenge". Ford did not accept the challenge and in face to face meetings they started to explain the use of "wrench time" as part of the calculation strategy. In simple yes or no questions, they would not admit that anyone could actually ever complete repairs in the times allotted, and they even went as far as to say those times are for controlling their costs as to what they pay the dealers for a specific warranty repair. The times they pay are not intended to reflect a technicians pay for doing that repair. Hmmmmmm.....

It's Long--Get a cup of coffee!! OK Deb. I have been following this thread since the beginning and thinking about a lot of the things you have to say. I have a lot to say in response-but first I want to remind you of my background--I am the one who taught, among other community college courses, GED classes for the past 10 years. I have seen first hand, on the order of 30-40 students per quarter, what happens to the students who didn't succeed in the public school system. That said, I will add that most of the opinion here comes from 1)the fact that I have spent a tremendous amount of time volunteering in my children's (7 and 10) elementary school 2) I know a LOT of teachers--both personally and professionally, 3) I have observed many elementary school classrooms and 4) I have friends and relatives with young children in five states (WA, CA KA MO, OK)and we talk and compare notes on a regular basis. So my response to some of your opinions: **Traditional education is NOT contemporary education: The public schools in NO WAY resemble elementary schools from 30 years ago and before. 1) I have not seen nor heard of any elementary classrooms with children lined up in rows and working exclusively independently since before I was in college. I realize there must be some, but that certainly is not the norm and your using that scenario as a piece of evidence about why public schools are so bad makes you sound rather uninformed. Learning-to-learn activities, group projects, independent, student driven investigations take up a SIGNIFICANT, if not a majority, of an elementary student's classroom time now. 2) All of the intermediate elementary (4th 5th and 6th grade) children I know attend their parent, teacher student conferences to discuss their progress and actively participate in setting their own goals. My son, for example has to keep a copy of the goal sheet that he filled out in the front of his binder for the entire school year. These goals must include something physical, something artistic and as many academic-oriented goals as he wants. Most of the students who attend their own conferences show up with some type of portfolio. This is NOT a new idea. The teachers may not give a name to the stack of work they are discussing with parents and students but they all have some examples ready to discuss. I finished elementary school in 1979 but everyone of my teachers arrived at the conferences with sample work to go over even in those dark ages. **I think everyone here will agree that standardized tests (and forgive the vulgarity) suck. However, it's like Winston Churchill (I think) said, something to the effect, that Democracy is a terrible form of government, its disorganized, unfair, rife with fraud and waste, etc. But does anyone have a better suggestion? The same is true of norm-standardized (investigate Washington states WASL for a great example of assessment testing that is not norm standardized and is being used as a model in other states now) tests. They do, like it or not, have a place in our society. Unfortunately, very few people in the public know how they work or how to interpret the results. This fact does not justify withholding that information from the public though. Our schools are PUBLIC--funded entirely by taxpayers who have EVERY RIGHT to know, by some measure, whether or not schools are doing their jobs. Like it or not, those schools, in under-funded, impoverished areas, are generally NOT educating their students as well as schools in the rich suburbs. Is that the schools or teacher's fault? Not entirely, no. Should we withhold funds from these schools? ABSOLUTELY not. But we MUST have an OBJECTIVE way to identify these schools and track their progress at improving the education of their students. It is not realistic to think that a school district can present 12,000 private portfolios with subjective teacher comments to the public for such evidence. **You said "valuable time is wasted when a teacher requires a student to memorize a spelling list or their multiplication tables." I challenge you to think of it from a different perspective: "Valuable time IS wasted if a student does not have his multiplication table or grade-level spelling memorized." I could give you easily a hundred examples to back up this idea but I'll give you just one: my 5th grade son, who is in a classroom where the teacher lets her students move as fast or as slow as they are comfortable going in math, just finished the 7th grade math book in a very short amount of time. There is NO WAY he could have done that if he had to stop and add up what 7 x 6 was every time he want to figure out how much interest he was going to make on his investment. NOT knowing multiplication tables would slow ANYONE down in their ability to learn and investigate more complex mathematical problems. ***One of the most important lessons I have learned (as an ex extemely opinionated environmentalist tree-hugger) in my life is that if you truly want to be an effective instrument of change, you will NEVER be able to do it with an extreme goal or opinion. Unfortunately, the world rarely, if ever, goes from point A to point C without mucking through point B along the way. I heard a lot of the same hooey as you from my wonderful professors when I was in college too. Part of their job is to turn out passionate teachers. But remember, for many of them, it has been awhile since they were in an elementary school for any significant amount of time. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle. For instance, someone has led you to believe that Howard Gardner?s ideas, while brilliant, are radical. I can think of no teacher that I know who is not very aware of his ideas and research. I hear teachers ALL THE TIME talking about designing classrooms and lessons that will address 'multiple intelligences' and different learning styles. While the public schools are in need of MUCH improvement, they do not , in any way as far as I can tell, resemble the schools that you are describing, which is one reason the people on this board are having a hard time embracing your ideas. Finally, I want to point out to you that your assertion that the people on this board "have blind faith in the traditional" methods of education or in our school system, is insulting. I am sure that you probably didn't mean it to sound that way, but it seems obvious to me that the very fact that they are here discussing issues and problems that they are dealing with in their children's schools is an indication that they are anything but ?blindly faithful?. On a more positive note, I will end by saying that your passion is admirable and I am sure that in the end you will be a wonderful teacher. Have a great day.

Sindely ... you don't have to go to the bad neighborhood ... it sends hit men out to find you. ============= http://www.proofpoint.com/threatinsight/posts/malware-in-ad-networks-infects-visitors-and-jeopardizes-brands.php "Malvertising attacks use online advertising channels to infiltrate malware into the computers of unsuspecting users by embedding malicious code within legitimate advertisements on trusted websites. " "Without having to click on anything, visitors to the impacted websites may be stealthily infected with the CryptoWall 2.0 ransomware. Using Adobe Flash, the malvertisements silently âÂÂpull inâ malicious exploits from the FlashPack Exploit Kit. The exploits attack a vulnerability in the end-usersâ browser and install CryptoWall 2.0 on end-usersâ computers." Here's a partial list of known infested sites - (biased because it was an Aussie research group) - which have since been cleaned up. Yahoo! Finance, Fantasy and Sports (yahoo.com, Global 4, US 4), AOL (realestate.aol.com, US 37, Global 119), The Atlantic ( theatlantic.com, US 386, Global 1,206), 9GAG (9gag.com, US 528, Global 201,), match.com (US 203, Global 631), The Sydney Morning Herald (www.smh.com.au, Australia 13, Global 780), realestate.com.au (Australia 17, Global 1,656), The Age (theage.com.au, Australia 34), stuff.co.nz (New Zealand 9), societe.com (France 54, Global 1,649), Dumpert (dumpert.nl, Netherlands 24), Flirchi (flirchi.com, India 106, Global 1,129), Weatherzone Australia (weatherzone.com.au, Australia 111), Brisbane Times (brisbanebrisbanetimes.com.au, Australia 183), RSVP (rsvp.com.au, Australia 351), The Canberra Times (canberratimes.com.au, Australia 403), Time Out (US 1,145, Global 1,816), The Beacon-News (beaconnews.suntimes.com, US 1,178), Merca2.0 (merca20.com, Mexico 229), clicccar.com (Japan 1,124), iPhone for Hong Kong (iphone4hongkong.com, HK 112), Noticias Argentinas (noticiasargentinas.com, Argentina 784)