North Texas Club Fact Sheet: Fill & Download for Free

I graduated with honors from the University of North Texas and eventually went on to teach in public schools. I learned that very clearly, college isn’t for everyone and there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, I would go so far as to say that there are far more people in college than need to be. I’d continue to say that this drive by society to say that not going to college is a sure direction to failure, is perpetuated by many institutions that profit by the aimless drifting of children trapped in a suspended state of late adolescence and is actually hurting society, rather than providing any meaningful value to those who place their fate in a degree.Simply, colleges are failing to do what they were advertised to do, mine included. If you aren’t in a school specifically reputable for outstanding output in a particular field, or aren’t going to one of the top 100 schools in the nation overall, I tell my kids that there isn’t much value in going to a college at all. The mediocre schools (of which most are) do not give skills that are valued in the marketplace. If we are really going to be honest with ourselves, deep down, we know that we aren’t really going for an education at all. We go to top universities to gain access to a group of people that also attended those universities - a form of social darwinism meant to separate the wheat from the chaff, and allow you to have conversations with other elites, as well as gain access to their dad’s capital to for potential seed funding. At best, perhaps it should be said that the colleges do grant some skills and valuable knowledge, but they have already done so to such an extent that they have flooded every market which can only be filled with college graduates with too many people for the markets to sustain. This naturally leads to many kids thinking that the solution to overeducation is yet more education, such as seeking their MBA to attain an even better job, not realizing that too is an oversaturated marketplace with even fewer opportunities to pay off their overwhelming college debt.Meanwhile, a plumber fixing a toilet can charge outrageous fees, not because he is a crook, but because there is far more demand for his services than he has the ability to supply. Of course, rather than attempting to make everyone happy (besides his wife and kids who would never see him), he has taken to charging more for his services, and reaching only those who are wealthy enough to afford it.As the story goes, services like the plumber and other jobs which we foolishly shamed as being unworthy of our efforts, are now being performed by fewer and fewer people, doing the smart thing of working fewer hours at a higher rate, which has the macro effect of providing an exponentially greater quality of life to the wealthiest quartile of people who can afford the luxury services they provide, while the bottom half or so of the population find services we could have considered basic when I was born, to be an almost overwhelming financial burden on even the smallest scale.It’s true, college isn’t for everyone. Many extremely smart people can simply skip it, or take on a trade school and be providing very well for themselves and their families straight out of high school, but we’ve fallen into a trap of believing otherwise — that a person isn’t a person until they have a very expensive piece of paper saying that they paid a very high price for (or borrowed at high interest, or even went to war for, such as in my case.) let’s also stress that piece of paper realistically only symbolizes for many little more than that they are part of a club whose only hazing rituals are being able to sit patientiently in chairs for four years and recite facts gained over the last 36 hours of study, miraculously forgotten as they walk out the door.Frankly, colleges would be far more useful, if there were far fewer of them, and if far fewer people thought they were the only path to success. Even more than this, we would all live in nicer homes if hiring a carpenter or roofer wasn’t so expensive, we would have safer homes if electricians were forced to compete more for the business of more people, and we would live cleaner lives if plumbers were abundant enough to be affordable to the bottom tier of the socioeconomic spectrum.If we really want to work for an egalitarian future where everyone has everything that everyone wants, we need to drive kids towards filling all the roles that exist and not flood markets with jobs that don’t need people with worthless sheets of very expensive paper.I’m reminded of a quote.Your profession is what you’re paid for; your passion is what you’re made for.Work doesn’t have to be what gives you meaning in life. Your passion can. Your passion could be your kids, your sports team, a hobby, volunteering, your faith, or maybe even your job. I remember reading a story about a garbage man who created a tiny model city out of shells that people can explore. The work took him years. Another from a forklift operator, who has given away millions to charity. Perhaps the best story of all, an Indian man who broke a mountain. After his wife died because she couldn’t reach a hospital 70 km away, he spent decades boring out a path between his village and the nearest town. He sold his family’s three goats for a hammer and chisels, worked during the day plowing fields then would work every evening and throughout the nights. 22 years after he began, he completed his road, 30 feet wide, with 25 feet high walls, and measuring some 360 feet in length. Thanks to his indomitable spirit, rather than a piece of paper on his wall, he reduced the distance from his village to the local town from 70 km, to just one.We’ve accidently created a world where we think that people attain fulfillment only through maximizing the value of their billable hours. For some, college gave fulfillment, but today, it’s just breaking something very important about what it means to be a person.***Thank you for reading. If you liked this answer, please upvote and follow The War Elephant. If you want to help me make more content like this, please visit my Patreon Support Page to learn how. All donations greatly appreciated!

As great as it would be, and as historically accurate it is, until Chicago builds an indoor stadium, it won’t happen. The possibility of debilitating weather is greater than chances of me getting a rash where you least want one. Playing in a warm climates not only allows the game to be played outside, but it rewards the teams, their families and the countless professional gamblers who write the trip off their tax returns. By playing south of Tulsa, Oklahoma, you are guaranteed great weather, right??Well, not for Super Bowl XLV in Arlington, Texas at Darth Jones’, newly operational Death Star, AT&T Stadium. The game was played on Sunday, February 11, 2011 to a Chamber of Commerce winter afternoon in North Texas. Bright sunshine, blue skies and crisp upper 50’s showed just how amazing winters in DFW can be. The problem was February 5th through the 10th. Those days have cost DFW any shot at hosting awaited it first Super Bowl anxiously. It was only fitting that the first Super Bowl hosted would pit two historical Cowboys’ nemeses; the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburg Steelers.The week prior to Super Bowl week, DFW enjoyed its normal mild winter temperatures. Plenty of sunshine, temps in high 50’s and calm winds. The forecast, however, began to turn for the worse. Media, fans, and the eyes of the sporting world all converged on DFW. The planes full of cheeseheads and terrible towel tossers arrived at invasion pace. As promised, our hotels filled up, restaurant reservations became scarce and the police cracked down on visiting escorts to protect the local escorts. All as planned until Monday afternoon. Then it hit.A strong southern gulf flow packing moisture drove temperature briefly into the 60’s. The humidity created havoc for the transient hairdo’s from up north. The gulf flow is like a tropical conveyor belt of water. That water is happy to stay up in the air and pass over DFW most times. We are still unsure which team brought it, but one carried with them one of the strongest arctic cold fronts to hit North Texas in years. Well, that will stop that gulf moisture in its tracks and drop it straight to the ground.First it came down as rain that, as the temperature plummeted, froze on everything. We call it black ice here in Texas, reminding me of one of my exes. This lasted for hours and paralyzed DFW. Schools closed, workplaces went dark. Hey, we only have two sand trucks and one snowplow in DFW, and only ones who know how to drive them were iced-in. After 24 hours of freezing rain, we get sleet, and lots of it. We take our blessing where we can; you can at least walk on sleet, a little.Every local weatherman will tell you, if you get freezing rain on top of sleet, God has chosen to forsake your people; he’s unhappy. By Wednesday afternoon, all moisture has ceased, then the temperature drops further. The heavy cloud cover blocks the sun as the polar air rushes in like my three sons at dinner time.Speaking of my boys, school is out. I’m a single Dad and their Moms are just far enough away to be no help, as opposed to normally doing nothing to assist. I live only about a mile from my office in Las Colinas and I had a Toyota FJ. Why not load them up and hang out at the office when no one is there. My office is on the 12th floor almost directly across street from the Omni Hotel; a perfect view of the expansive front drive and entrance. Well, the Omni happened to be the hotel and headquarters for the Packers. My oldest genius was the one to figure out that when one of out two sand trucks arrived, soon followed three big charter buses. Those first two buses filled with players, coaches and team official, the third reserved for family. Add a couple of Irving PD cruisers, and off the convoy went traveling on desolate, abandoned freeways.It’s not that my two youngest are slow, but the oldest again showed why he is in the upper half of all mammals when it comes to IQ. He blurts out and says, “Dad; let’s follow them”! So, off we go. We spend next two days stalking team from my office window. Salt truck arrives, we head down elevators to garage and line-up behind the last cop car. We followed them all over. While we were not able to see the attractions with the team, we were close enough they would interact some with boys and were very nice. My middle Son still has a soft spot for the Packers I’ve yet to harden.We dined at Jinbeh, the fantastic Japanese restaurant next door to the Omni Thursday night. It was filled with Packers’ fans. They told us of shopping trips to buy winter clothes, golf clubs left in hotels, and wrecked rental cars. I told them they were tying up one of our only salt trucks. The fans were so shocked and surprised by our frigid weather.There began to be slight improvement on Saturday with the sun emerging but temperatures still hovered at only freezing. The sun began to melt ice on roadways only to refreeze overnight. Super Bowl Sunday dawns to beautiful sunshine reassuring us we could ship our kids back to school Monday.AT&T Stadium is a site to see. It is much bigger in real life. Its as tall as a 20 story building and over a half mile end-to-end. And it’s white! You can see if from miles away; an ever present beacon to the Cowboy nation. Well, that huge white roof was covered in a massive sheet of ice up to three inches thick. Just as fans began to arrive at the stadium, having been exposed to the sun all morning, the ice began to fall. The fact no one on the was injured or worse is a testament to a security team managing nothing previously experienced.But this too, passed and by game time, everyone was in the stadium and had a seat. Well, almost everyone. Darth Jones actually oversold the stadium, maybe in the belief some just wouldn’t show up? That lawsuit drug on and worthy of it’s own review. I have digressed enough.The moral to all this is: Chicago, build an indoor stadium. You will be a fabulous host for the biggest event in sports. Snow or even ice is nothing you can’t handle. Just get a roof to play under!I’ve been told that as the first sheets broke loose, you would hear what was described as a “small cannon shot”. Then enormous sheets of ice would come cascading down.

This has been comprehensively answered already. I would only add that we in the USA are heading down the same path as the UK. Conservatives are routinely attacked in public places like restaurants, or asked/told to leave by the management, and if they don’t are subject to a mob screaming hate at, and sometimes throwing water at them. If someone with a right-wing philosophy, irrespective of his or her credentials, is invited to speak at a university by its conservative club, in many cases the faculty cancels the invitation at the last minute “for safety.” They don’t remind students that the word “university” means a marketplace of ideas and opinions, that “freedom of speech” means not only speech with which you agree but also that to which you are adamantly opposed, or warn students that if they prevent the invitee from speaking by drowning him/her out with bullhorns or organized shouting, they will be removed from the auditorium. Instead, they do nothing when those things actually happen, including throwing stuff at the speaker.Worse, as we saw last year in U. Cal. Berkeley (ironically, called “the birthplace of freedom of speech”) and others, when a conservative was invited to speak rioting mobs destroyed property, burned cars and committed arson, while the cops were told to stand down and not intervene.Another ominous sign is the designation of “hate crimes.”You get mugged. The robber says: "It's nothing personal I just want your money." Do you feel better that you weren't the victim of a hate crime? Does your head hurt less, your wallet feel less empty? Do you say, "That's OK then, no hard feelings"? Now what if the robber adds: "Take that, you [epithet denigrating your race, religion, sexual orientation. ethnicity, or whatever designation may be added in the future]," which thus qualifies this as a hate crime. Are your injury and financial loss suddenly greater?The laws of almost every state say yes. In my home state, our legislators enacted a law in 1982 stating: "Pennsylvania considers certain crimes to be more serious when motivated by hatred toward the race, color, religion or national origin of another individual or group of individuals." So, to its eternal shame, does the Supreme Court of the United States. You may say: "And quite right, too," but I have a lot of problems with this. First, ,isn't every violent crime a hate crime?Second, and most seriously, the states say, and the U.S. Supreme Court concurs, that a judge can increase a penalty because of what was on the perpetrator'smind at the time of the offense. For a crime of violence, the penalty might be,for example, five years imprisonment. But if it was determined that the perpetrator was motivated by hatred of some group on the designated list, the judge may add, say, three years to his sentence, Essentially the perpetrator will be serving three years for his thoughts and opinions, which are supposed to be protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution, a key freedom differentiating us from totalitarian states such as China, Cuba and North Korea. George Orwell warned us of this in his novel 1984, where the state tapped into people's minds and determined whether they were committing "thought crimes." The founding fathers gave us the right to shout from the rooftops, or publish in any media, your dislike, even hatred, of certain people or groups of people, so long as you did not incite others to commit crimes as a result. Theyheld that the answer to hate speech was not repression, but more speech. Now, for the sake of political correctness, our lawmakers have said "phooey" to the First Amendment,And only certain Politically-Correct groups are admitted to the club of potential hate-crime victims. If your robber had said: "Take that, you lousy sheet-metal worker," "accountant," or even (how did these slip through?) "lawyer,' or "politician," he has committed no hate crime, despite his lifelong bitter hatred of accountants, etc. This legislation leads to all kinds of absurdities. Absent a verbal epithet, did a black thief target a middle-class white person (1) because of his race, or (2) because experience has taught him that a victim of this socioeconomic group will provide richer pickings? The former would be a hate crime; the latter would not.And what if, because of my Irish name, a mugger opened my wallet, looked at my driver’s license and said, "I hate you Papists"? Would the fact that I am an agnostic make it a hate crime or not? Finally, political correctness, and the fear of being labeled a racist, homophobe, religious bigot, etc., have resulted in a public perception and media bias in favor of certain groups and against others. In 1998, when Matthew Shepard, a gay student, was robbed and killed, it was labeled a hate crime due to his sexual orientation. However, when to-year-old Jeffrey Curley was raped and killed by two homosexual men in 1997, this was not labeled a hate crime. When James Byrd, a black man, was dragged to his death by white men in Texas, this was called a hate crime, but when Colin Ferguson, a black man, shot and killed six white Long Island Railroad passengers and wounded 19 others in 1993, it was not classified as a hate crime, despite Ferguson's long history of antiwhite rants. Even the death of 3,000 innocent people at the hands of anti-American, anti-Judeo-Christian radical lslamics on Sept. 11, 2001, is not called a hate crime.Congress recently considered an amendment extending hate-crime legislation to federal law. Sen. Rick Santorum (Republican, Pa.) was one of the few with the courage to vote no, explaining that he believed "the federal government should not create separate classes of crimes for the same criminal actions, with the onlydistinguishing characteristic being the thoughts of the perpetrator."