originalname32

I don't know if you would even know this, but how much does an artificial heart cost?

/Well done with the 4.2 mile run.

18 inch titanium rod in my femur

Still badass. I had a titanium rod in my femur and I watched Lamb Chop's sing along all day.

I feel like the 7 out of 95,000 teachers fired statistic helps illustrate mbburt's point. Part of the job of administrators is to build a case to fire poor performing teachers. If the administration isn't doing this, they are not doing their job. Part of the union's job is to keep teachers from being fired unfairly. If the administration hasn't built a case, I would hope the union would go to bat for that teacher.

My wife was a teacher in a situation similar to OP's. She never once had an administrator audit her class. They are supposed to do audits 3 times a year, but no one ever did. Luckily, my wife a is a good teacher. But if the crap teachers aren't being audited, how can anyone make a case to fire them?

tl;dr: Administration is just as culpable as unions when it comes to bad teachers keeping their jobs.

Actually, I think (if I'm reading the wikipedia right) Peter Houghton went 7 years without a human heart. He got the TAH in 2000 when he was 62 and died in 2007 when he was 69.

I think the 4 years number is the length of time he was on one artificial heart before they put him on a second one.

Is that actually Kate Upton?

Every time I see that commercial, I think "Oh wow, she REALLY looks like Kate Upton. But there is no way in hell a webgame could afford her."