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The thing is: effective schooling requires (a) commitment from the families and (b) discipline within the school. If you have families who don't care that their kids aren't learning, who don't care that their kids disrupt school for everyone else, you're screwed. If you have a school that tolerates disruptive behavior...

That all sounds so reasonable, and got you a +5 to boot, but while part a) is fine, part b) is a disaster. Schools all over the country have tried that. Zero Tolerance is an unmitigated disaster. It is NOT working. I would bet a nickel that a good many of the kids in the LeBron James school were "zero toleranced" out of their regular school. You don't get to be 2nd percentile by accident.

Some of this is personal observation, but most of it I got from my mother, who was a high school English teacher off and on for 40 years. One of the schools she taught in was University City in St. Louis. U. City was very nearly majority black, at the time, with a population 48% African American. My mother was an extremely popular teacher, specifically because she was NOT a disciplinarian. She kept control of her classrooms, but she didn't rule with an iron fist like these Zero Tolerance morons.

She remembers specific students quite well, as you might expect. One of the kids couldn't sit still. He'd pop out of his chair and wander around the room. She'd let him do it. If he was white, he'd have been diagnosed with ADHD and dosed to the gills on designer pharmaceuticals today, but this was the late 1980s, and he was black, so ADHD didn't exist yet. In a Zero Tolerance authoritarian dictatorship so commonly found today, he'd have been endlessly sent to the principal's office, stuck in detention, and eventually suspended, with some bullshit line about how "disruptive" he is. When in fact it's the authoritarian moron who is being self-disruptive by making mountains out of molehills. When she really needed him to sit, my mother could get him to quite easily. There's a certain jocular tone you can take that will get you "ok, ok, I'm goin'..." obedience, and my mother knows how to use it. The authoritarian "Siddown right now or you're outta here!" approach gets you nothing but defiance from the same kid.

This school will help some individual kids, but that cultural problem is the real problem, and someday it is going to have to be addressed.

There are two cultural problems to be addressed. Yes, Black culture needs to accept that in the modern world, education is a necessity. But school culture also needs to finally realize that the nightmare that is Prussian Factory Education doesn't work especially well for anybody, and really doesn't work for black kids. You only get perfectly still rows of silent children sitting at their desks with perfect posture with their hands folded in front of them when they're all white and scared[1]. You don't get that from black kids ever, and there's an argument to be made, rather eloquently by J. T Gatto, that getting it from white kids is a terrible choice too.

----

[1] You aren't going to scare the black kids. Their mommas are a lot scarier than you.

How much of their own attention do business leaders at the top of the food chain allow to take part in the Attention Economy? Beyond a certain point, doesn't spending loads of time binge-watching, playing games, etc, make one less likely to be creative, to innovate, and to successfully strategize in business and in personal endeavours? OTOH, it seems to me that overloading the mental processing power of the plebs with trivialities makes them more pliable and, (perhaps paradoxically), less likely to inquire deeply into the activities of the point-one-percenters. The attention economy is all about fleecing average people while undermining their ability to rise above the average and make full use of their capabilities.

I don't even have to posit a conspiracy to make this argument work - it's possible that things either evolved this way or we ended up here largely by chance. However, there is ample evidence of such a conspiracy in our education system dating back more than a century. For more on the characteristics and consequences of the education system that was created by the Robber Barons for their own purposes, see John Taylor Gatto's book. (PDF).

Couldn't find any mention of Guy Steele, so I'll throw in The New Hacker's Dictionary , which I once owned in dead tree form. Not sure if Version 4.4.7 http://catb.org/jargon/html/ is the latest online... Also remember a couple of his language manuals. Probably used the Common Lisp one the most...

Didn't find any mention of a lot of books that I consider highly relevant, but that may reflect my personal bias towards history. Not really relevant for most programmers.

TMI, but if I open up my database on all the computer science stuff, the "score" is 352, of which the first 22 are in Japanese.

http://shanenj.tripod.com/cgi-...

http://macop.tripod.com/mac/To...

Jeff Schmidt was an editor of Physics Today for 19 years when he published those comments in his critique of the graduate programs, Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul Battering System that Shapes their Lives. He was immediately fired by the American Institute of Physics, which led Jeff to sue them. This case shortly thereafter became the largest freedom-of-expression case in North American physics, with 500 physicists signing a letter of support for Jeff's right to publish his critique without losing his job.

The AIP ultimately settled with Jeff. You can learn about the details of the case here.

Doesn't everyone have a personal database app to answer such crucial questions? Seriously, I should port it from the current CGI/PERL to something more reasonable and more smartphone friendly. Here is the answer for this month:

http://shanenj.tripod.com/cgi-...

Only five so far, but that's a live link and I may finish another 5 before the end of the month.

For last month, the answer is nine books:

http://shanenj.tripod.com/cgi-...^.{44}1808&searchfields=all&sensecase=nocase&sorttype=none&datetype=comp&numorname=authnums

For the year 2018 (in another live link, though sorted by title using a special book-title ordering function (to ignore leading "A ", "An " or "The ")) the current answer is 98:

http://shanenj.tripod.com/cgi-...

With a suitable regex, I can even answer such peculiar questions as "How many books did I finish on the 15 day of the month?" The current answer is 116 (for the entire database going back to 1971).

Seriously, can anyone point me at a good Python source I could modify to achieve something less kludgy?

Unusual that I posted before searching the existing comments, but I'll do that now... Especially interested in funny books.

Doesn't everyone have a personal database app to answer such crucial questions? Seriously, I should port it from the current CGI/PERL to something more reasonable and more smartphone friendly. Here is the answer for this month:

http://shanenj.tripod.com/cgi-...

Only five so far, but that's a live link and I may finish another 5 before the end of the month.

For last month, the answer is nine books:

http://shanenj.tripod.com/cgi-...^.{44}1808&searchfields=all&sensecase=nocase&sorttype=none&datetype=comp&numorname=authnums

For the year 2018 (in another live link, though sorted by title using a special book-title ordering function (to ignore leading "A ", "An " or "The ")) the current answer is 98:

http://shanenj.tripod.com/cgi-...

With a suitable regex, I can even answer such peculiar questions as "How many books did I finish on the 15 day of the month?" The current answer is 116 (for the entire database going back to 1971).

Seriously, can anyone point me at a good Python source I could modify to achieve something less kludgy?

Unusual that I posted before searching the existing comments, but I'll do that now... Especially interested in funny books.

Doesn't everyone have a personal database app to answer such crucial questions? Seriously, I should port it from the current CGI/PERL to something more reasonable and more smartphone friendly. Here is the answer for this month:

http://shanenj.tripod.com/cgi-...

Only five so far, but that's a live link and I may finish another 5 before the end of the month.

For last month, the answer is nine books:

http://shanenj.tripod.com/cgi-...^.{44}1808&searchfields=all&sensecase=nocase&sorttype=none&datetype=comp&numorname=authnums

For the year 2018 (in another live link, though sorted by title using a special book-title ordering function (to ignore leading "A ", "An " or "The ")) the current answer is 98:

http://shanenj.tripod.com/cgi-...

With a suitable regex, I can even answer such peculiar questions as "How many books did I finish on the 15 day of the month?" The current answer is 116 (for the entire database going back to 1971).

Seriously, can anyone point me at a good Python source I could modify to achieve something less kludgy?

Unusual that I posted before searching the existing comments, but I'll do that now... Especially interested in funny books.

I've even heard Liberal commentators trying to make the argument that PBS is better off 'freed' from government funding, since it's now less subject to accusations of bias. Except that it's now biased toward the corporate overlords... Hmmm, am I making your point?

I think you might be - so allow me to try to return the favour... ;-)

During the last four or five decades, people have had loads of opportunities to vote in ways that count - not only at the ballot box, but with their feet, their wallets, their shopping choices, TV and movie choices, food choices, and on and on and on. They've pretty consistently opted out of anything that required effory, discomfort, or higher taxes - and they started doing that while the mass brainwashing we've been discussing was still in its infancy. As for the founding fathers, I really don't think it was possible for them to do a much better job than they did. Ultimately, we're limited by human nature - both our own, and each other's. Most people say we get the government we deserve, while I've always complained that I get the government my neighbours deserve. I guess I ought to stop that, given that I've not been out knocking on doors, organizing protests and boycotts, etc.

As an aside, if you haven't read 'The Underground History of American Education' by John Taylor Gatto, then I recommend it. It's out of print, but available at http://mhkeehn.tripod.com/ugho... as a free PDF download. If you've ever wondered why public schools are the way they are, (and why the population seems dumber than you think it ought to be), you may find Gatto's answers to be real eye openers.

Surprisingly, the statistics is suggestive: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/0...
"They say they believe in freedom and share our values. They say a few bad apples shouldn't bring down judgment on their entire kind. Don't be fooled. Though they walk among us with impunity, they are, in the words of Henry Farrell, a political scientist at George Washington University, "a group that is notoriously associated with terrorist violence and fundamentalist political beliefs."
    They are engineers.
    Farrell, of course, was kidding. He posted that comment on a blog shortly after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (confessed Al Qaeda operative and engineering student) tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit last winter. But the satire was rooted in a statistical fact: in the ranks of captured and confessed terrorists, engineers and engineering students are significantly overrepresented. Maybe that's a numerological accident. The sociologist Diego Gambetta and the political scientist Steffen Hertog don't think so. ..."

And also: http://www.slate.com/articles/...
"It's true that eight of the 25 hijackers on 9/11 were engineers ..."

Alternatives: "The Ethical Engineer: An "Ethics Construction Kit" Places Engineering in a New Light" by Eugene Schlossberger
https://www.amazon.com/Ethical...
"On occasion, professionals need to use moral reasoning as well as engineering skills to function effectively in their occupation. Eugene Schlossberger has created a practical guide to ethical decision-making for engineers, students, and workers in business and industry. The Ethical Engineer sets out the tools and materials essential to dealing with whistle-blowing, environmental and safety concerns, bidding, confidentiality, conflict of interest, sales ethics, advertising, employer-employee relations, when to fight a battle, and when to break the rules. The author offers recommendations and techniques as well as rules, principles, and values that can guide the reader. Lively examples, engaging anecdotes, witty comments, and well-reasoned analysis prove his conviction that "ethics is good business.""

And also: "Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt
http://disciplinedminds.tripod...
"Who are you going to be? That is the question.
    In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."
    The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy.
    Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue one's own social vision in today's corporate society. He shows how an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional employee can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job."

Here is an explanation from 1994 by Dr. David Goodstein of Caltech, who testified to Congress on this back then, whose "The Big Crunch" essay concludes: https://www.its.caltech.edu/~d...
"Let me finish by summarizing what I've been trying to tell you. We stand at an historic juncture in the history of science. The long era of exponential expansion ended decades ago, but we have not yet reconciled ourselves to that fact. The present social structure of science, by which I mean institutions, education, funding, publications and so on all evolved during the period of exponential expansion, before The Big Crunch. They are not suited to the unknown future we face. Today's scientific leaders, in the universities, government, industry and the scientific societies are mostly people who came of age during the golden era, 1950 - 1970. I am myself part of that generation. We think those were normal times and expect them to return. But we are wrong. Nothing like it will ever happen again. It is by no means certain that science will even survive, much less flourish, in the difficult times we face. Before it can survive, those of us who have gained so much from the era of scientific elites and scientific illiterates must learn to face reality, and admit that those days are gone forever."

And see also "Disciplined Minds" from 2000 about some other consequences: http://disciplinedminds.tripod... "In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline." The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy. Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue one's own social vision in today's corporate society."

Or Philip Greenspun from 2006: http://philip.greenspun.com/ca...
"This is how things are likely to go for the smartest kid you sat next to in college. He got into Stanford for graduate school. He got a postdoc at MIT. His experiment worked out and he was therefore fortunate to land a job at University of California, Irvine. But at the end of the day, his research wasn't quite interesting or topical enough that the university wanted to commit to paying him a salary for the rest of his life. He is now 44 years old, with a family to feed, and looking for job with a "second rate has-been" label on his forehead. Why then, does anyone think that science is a sufficiently good career that people should debate who is privileged enough to work at it? Sample bias."

Or the Village Voice from 2004 about how it is even worse in the humanities than sci/tech grad school:
https://web.archive.org/web/20...
"Here's an exciting career opportunity you won't see in the classified ads. For the first six to 10 years, it pays less than $20,000 and demands superhuman levels of commitment in a Dickensian environment. Forget about marriage, a mortgage, or even Thanksgiving dinners, as the focus of your entire life narrows to the production, to exacting specifications, of a 300-page document le

Remember that the 22 milligram lethal dose for plutonium is for direct injection into the bloodstream, not how much is eaten.

Wow - you just lie with impunity - there was no direct injection into the bloodstream. In the citation for the source of the very article you cite the information comes from a well known accident at Los Alamos and refers to external exposure, not to internal exposure.

You're a liar blindseer.

I make computer games. http://hackwrench.tripod.com/

I'm a 40-year old on disability, you insensitive clod and FB and Twitter have a place alongside Slashdot and Digg to keep me connected to the world. I am consuming more and more and trying to get my parents out of the 20th century. I am working to get off disability, though. http://hackwrench.tripod.com/ and http://github.com/hackwrench

It's actually old and pirated off the internet.Funny the original author was making fun of himself. http://emganin.tripod.com/home...

... you probably lose your scientific career soon enough (sadly).
http://philip.greenspun.com/ca...
"This is how things are likely to go for the smartest kid you sat next to in college. He got into Stanford for graduate school. He got a postdoc at MIT. His experiment worked out and he was therefore fortunate to land a job at University of California, Irvine. But at the end of the day, his research wasn't quite interesting or topical enough that the university wanted to commit to paying him a salary for the rest of his life. He is now 44 years old, with a family to feed, and looking for job with a "second rate has-been" label on his forehead. Why then, does anyone think that science is a sufficiently good career that people should debate who is privileged enough to work at it? Sample bias."

Having a successful and informative experiment may sometime even end your career sooner than failing in an ideologically approved way:
http://disciplinedminds.tripod...
"In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline." The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy."

Part of the reason why:
https://www.its.caltech.edu/~d...
"By now, in the 1990's, the situation has changed dramatically. With the Cold War over, National Security is rapidly losing its appeal as a means of generating support for scientific research. There are those who argue that research is essential for our economic future, but the managers of the economy know better. The great corporations have decided that central research laboratories were not such a good idea after all. Many of the national laboratories have lost their missions and have not found new ones. The economy has gradually transformed from manufacturing to service, and service industries like banking and insurance don't support much scientific research. To make matters worse, the country is almost 5 trillion dollars in debt, and scientific research is among the few items of discretionary spending left in the national budget. There is much wringing of hands about impending shortages of trained scientific talent to ensure the Nation's future competitiveness, especially since by now other countries have been restored to economic and scientific vigor, but in fact, jobs are scarce for recent graduates. Finally, it should be clear by now that with more than half the kids in America already going to college, academic expansion is finished forever. ...
Peer review is usually quite a good way to identify valid science. Of course, a referee will occasionally fail to appreciate a truly visionary or revolutionary idea, but by and large, peer review works pretty well so long as scientific validity is the only issue at stake. However, it is not at all suited to arbitrate an intense competition for research funds or for editorial space in prestigious journals. There are many reasons for this, not the least being the fact that the referees have an obvious conflict of interest, since they are themselves competitors for the same resources. This point seems to be another one

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

A supervisor at IBM Research pointed this out to me -- a big challenge the farming villagers face in hiring Samurai is that they do not know what makes a good one...

A deeper issue in your post is discussed in "Have Fun at Work" by W. L. Livingston
https://www.amazon.com/Have-Fu...
"The practical abilities of engineers are buried and ignored by institutions whose sole objective is their own survival. Whereas the individual engineer has a publicly admitted duty of care for his fellow beings, institutions have no such concern, for their aims take no account of the human cost of their activities. This Handbook provides the recipe for the survival of the practical professional. The Handbook is offered to serve the needs of the professional engineer but it demands a much wider readership for it examines the interactions between the responsible individual and the supra-human entities that constrain and control him."

He provides examples of presenting suitable candidates to organizations desperately in need of them who the organizations reject in their ignorance of their true needs.

Bottom line: interviews are a game. They don't have to make sense. You chose (and also demonstrated) you did not want to play the game. So, they effectively screened you out as a non-game-player.

Of course, it is possible those organizations may collapse because of screening out such people -- but that tends to be the nature of most organizations and potentially self-limiting social processes. And those reasons are not all bad -- given that humans evolved in a context of living in cooperative hunter/gather tribes who in a sense were playing a collective game together.

See also:
https://aeon.co/essays/you-don...
"How organisations enshrine collective stupidity and employees are rewarded for checking their brains at the office door ... One well-known firm that Mats Alvesson and I studied for our book The Stupidity Paradox (2016) said it employed only the best and the brightest. When these smart new recruits arrived in the office, they expected great intellectual challenges. However, they quickly found themselves working long hours on 'boring' and 'pointless' routine work. After a few years of dull tasks, they hoped that they'd move on to more interesting things. But this did not happen. As they rose through the ranks, these ambitious young consultants realised that what was most important was not coming up with a well-thought-through solution. It was keeping clients happy with impressive PowerPoint shows. Those who did insist on carefully thinking through their client's problems often found their ideas unwelcome. If they persisted in using their brains, they were often politely told that the office might not be the place for them. ..."

And:
http://disciplinedminds.tripod...
"Who are you going to be? That is the question.
In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."
The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typic

I pay since September 2012 anyone [EURO SIGN THAT I'M SURE SLASHDOT WILL MANGLE]1.000.000:- that can describe a manned space trip but no one has managed my Challenge.

Well, take him up if you're so confident! http://heiwaco.tripod.com/chal...

Want a good laugh? Someone (who will remain nameless because I am embarrassed that I know someone that stupid) recently told me that all space travel is impossible and I am a fool for believing it. Astounded I asked him why he thought that and he pointed me to this website with "inconvertible proof";-

http://heiwaco.tripod.com/moon...

I want to know where my €9.000:-/month for life is for lying about it?

But yeah, like I said, conspiracy theorists are gullible.

Why are so many public schools such hellholes that administrators feel they need to take such measures in the name of "student safety"? If the argument is that the problems in schools originate outside of the schools, then mightn't the schooling of previous generations bear at least some of the blame? And a related question - why do so many schools have cops on duty?

Might there be a fundamental flaw in public education - one that goes back to the inception of American public schools (pdf) and was based on an insufferable level of presumption that was explicitly stated at the time?

When you start to come to grips with the overwhelming evidence that public education was designed to extend immaturity, foster dependence and obedience, and ensure a qualified labour pool, then it's no surprise to find that school boards and the CIA might share common goals and methods.

U.S. education, it seems, is becoming The Game of Billionaires.

Public education as it exists in America today was instituted by the robber barons for the purpose of producing compliant, unimaginative, mentally and experientially stunted citizens to constitute an easily managed, reflexively obedient industrial workforce that would have insufficient independence and free thought to upset the long range plans and investments of the industrialists.

Charter schools supported and molded by the likes of Gates, Zuckerberg, and Jobs are just the latest manifestation of a century-old ongoing process in which the ultra-rich manipulate the minds and vocations of the rest of the population.

I strongly recommend reading Gatto's "The Underground History of American Education", (available as a PDF file here) - I found it to be an eye-opening experience. 'Sheeple' get a lot of grief here on Slashdot; Gatto's work explains why there are so many of them. You might also discover that you have a lot more in common with those sheeple than you realize - I know I did.

U.S. education, it seems, is becoming The Game of Billionaires.

Public education as it exists in America today was instituted by the robber barons for the purpose of producing compliant, unimaginative, mentally and experientially stunted citizens to constitute an easily managed, reflexively obedient industrial workforce that would have insufficient independence and free thought to upset the long range plans and investments of the industrialists.

Charter schools supported and molded by the likes of Gates, Zuckerberg, and Jobs are just the latest manifestation of a century-old ongoing process in which the ultra-rich manipulate the minds and vocations of the rest of the population.

I strongly recommend reading Gatto's "The Underground History of American Education", (available as a PDF file here) - I found it to be an eye-opening experience. 'Sheeple' get a lot of grief here on Slashdot; Gatto's work explains why there are so many of them. You might also discover that you have a lot more in common with those sheeple than you realize - I know I did.

You mean like this?

It's Vaughn Bode's Ramdove Weapons Platform.

Meet our new VCR.
http://eightiesclub.tripod.com...

Nah mate, if you put rails in the outback some crimmo will steal 'em.

http://outbacktowing.tripod.co...

There is almost no funding for gun violence research because the gun lobby knows it will produce more papers like this one.

Hopefully that will change, but i think the U.S. will switch to the metric system first.

So the $16 Million in research funding by George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and the Joyce and MacArthur Foundations is almost no funding? Prior to the Dickey Amendment, only about 3 percent of papers on gun control received US government funding. There is still plenty of "funding for gun violence research", all that changed is that CDC usage of tax money was restricted after the CDC spent millions on gun control propaganda "studies" with preordained outcomes to support a political push for more gun control laws. This was never a ban on research or statistics collection.

Mark Rosenberg, Director the CDC National Center of Injury Prevention branch stated on record that he “envisions a long term campaign, similar to tobacco use and auto safety, to convince Americans that guns are, first and foremost, a public health menace.” (Rolling Stone, 1993), and also “We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with cigarettes. It used to be that smoking was a glamour symbol — cool, sexy, macho. Now it is dirty, deadly — and banned.” (Washington Post,10/19/1994). Does this sound like unbiased scientific research, or like a politician?

If anything, the publication and funding of actual "gun violence research" has increased since the Dickey Amendment, it's just that the CDC is no longer allowed to hand out taxpayer money to their friends to help push a political agenda.

That is an intellectually dishonest characterization on your part. The problem on college campuses is that people's first amendment rights are being trampled because some people can't handle hearing things that don't fit their worldview. There is a word for people who throw a fit when reality doesn't fit their idealized worldview: primary narcissists.

"Primary Narcissism, in psychology is a defense mechanism, common in the formative years (6 months to 6 years old). It is intended to shield the infant and toddler from the inevitable hurt and fears involved in the individuation-separation phase of personal development."

These kids just need to grow up and learn some coping mechanisms. The world isn't a safe place, there will be triggers out there and you need to learn how to cope to be a functional, rational human being in our society. Taking away first amendments is unacceptable.

Whatever - if Obama was to declare that Christmas falls in December, there would be a storm of protests from so-called freedom advocates.

That's because Jesus was born in August, you insensitive clod!

It is probably in our best interests that the climates we live in are compatible with us.

Well, then global warming should be good news,

And for some, after adjustment, it will be good news. For others? a catastrophe. This is the part that so many do not get. Canada so far has had an extension of the term between killing frosts, so the frost free season is lengthening. - also the Western US. Here is some interesting US data.

http://nca2014.globalchange.go....

Then again, some places might not be so fortunate. Some may even become colder. As the Greenland ice melts, the Weather in England might get a little frosty. This might happen if the gulf stream gets interrupted by the cold fresh water influx from Greenland.

At present in Ireland, they grow cabbage palm at the same latitude as Newfoundland - the warming effects of the gulf stream are so dominant, all may go away.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/... And some areas that are now verdant, may become arid. All sort of the luck of the draw.

I always like to put discussions in the manner in which others can relate. Strategically, is it wise to gamble that the US will always be blessed by climate? If large portions of the country turn into desert - is that a good formula for continued role as the world's superpower.

And that petrofuel. Is it patriotic and smart burning huge amounts of that portable energy dense fuel in gas guzzlers that we may some day need for our jet fighters?

Not the most glamorous web page, but interesting: http://vanrcook.tripod.com/Ger... Oddly enough, many people who consider themselves more patriotic, and love their country more than others, are happy to burn as much fossil fuel and use as much of the energy dense petrofuel, that they may have a leading role in our diminished power. All by foolishly believing people who are not at all patriotic, but have money as the central theme of their lives, but are smart enough to enlist them.

Me? I consider it my patriotic duty to enable the warfighters the best chance of fulfilling their missions.

So I'm going to drive, but I'm also going to conserve. I'm also going to attempt to have my country in good shape as long as possible.

I know that all that you say is true. I know that there are repetitively redundant backups for everything. But, one thing I never established for myself. Without electrical power, could we have fired our main guns? I know that after an EMP, our missiles and rockets would have been useless. Torpedos would almost certainly have been useless. But, the main guns? I'm just not sure. Some of the subsystems would be worthless, for sure. And, ammunition would be limited to whatever was in the ready locker, and what the powder monkeys could hump up three decks. Could we fire the guns?

I just don't know for sure. Something would have to be hacked together to set off the electrical primers, for starters.

http://ddg23.tripod.com/ddg23_...

Every time I see some of these crazy machinations to try to jam more and more people into less and less space, I can't help but think of this diagram:

Description of a Slave Ship

The economic motives are even similar, more bodies per craft = more profit.

Indeed. I had fun writing assembly code that protected the DOs partition and obfuscated the MBR upon boot unless you typed the correct password. Or having fun with mates, intercepting the writing calls to the floppy disk and encoding everything. Here, lets write this floppy disk for you to take some files. Also wrote a virtual floppy disk in RAM. Heck, one of my first assembly programs in the PC was writing an emulation of mouse via keyboard. Gave it to some jackass friends that I do not know why in earth, changed my name to Electronic arts as it was being used to play with Deluxe Paint. My final project coursework was a Spectrum Z80 emulation, and had a companion DOS program that read software on tape via SoundBlaster or the parallel port. http://ruka12.tripod.com/wspec...

Working link:

An Underground History of American Education (PDF)

Greasemonkey for Firefox
Tampermonkey for Chrome

I've spent a lot of time writing and maintaining scripts to add beauty and functionality to the Hollywood Stock Exchange, http://hsx.com/. Check 'em out if you play, or start to play: http://ez-edzep.tripod.com/

the internet was a govenment thing? lol you went too far there. tut tut... landing a person on a moon isn't a problem, it's a waste of resources and dick waving to the russians. GM is a disaster and just a money maker for monsanto. saftey in the auto industry? germans made the first airbag and it's wasn't gov' funded, laminated windscreens - yeah you guessed it not a gov' funded thing, seat belts? same again, only later did they decide to bring them into law. please stop chucking around the word fact, you don't know what it means. fact.

The internet came from DARPA funding. It grew out of ARPANET, which was created using the US Department of Defense funding. So yes, it was a US government thing. They also helped to develop Multics, which was also quite important. Your revisionism is noted, however.

And landing a man on the moon is a waste? Yeah, I'm sure that had no benefits whatsoever.

GM employs hundreds of thousands of people. But sure, that's just a big Monsanto conspiracy.

If you think government response had nothing to do with auto safety, you're an idiot. The car industry was very resistant in the US to introducing safety measures, and even went after Ralph Nader for writing his book, Unsafe at Any Speed. It was the US government that hauled the president of GM in front of a senate subcommittee and forced him to apologize for what they did trying to discredit Nader.

Facts. Perhaps you should try learning more of them.

Thanks for taking the time to talk about this, I feel fervently about this and I take pleasure in learning about this topic. Please, as you gain information, please update this blog with more information. I have found it very useful. There have to be charging stations everywhere. http://opiektidung.webs.com/ http://opiektidung.over-blog.c... http://opiektidung.tripod.com/ http://antontidung.blog.com/ http://opiektidung.yolasite.co... http://paketpulautidung.yolasi... http://opiektidung.angelfire.c... http://opiektidung.blogdetik.c... http://opiektidung.livejournal... http://adityaputra099.blogspot...

I hate to be so harsh, but the amount of irrational bullshit that people spread deserves harsh responses and heavy criticism. Don't worry, citations are provided at the end of this post.

If this was really and truly "for the children" as you claim I want you to demonstrate that today's kids are smarter than kids 100 years ago. You can't, because facts do not back this at all. On average our IQ is 4-14 points lower today than it was 60 years ago. That is not a small measure, that is a huge measure. This is even though when Radio came out we were told that Radio would make everyone smarter, and when TV came out we were told TV would make everyone smarter, and when home video came out we were told that home video would make everyone smarter, and when computers came out we were told that computers would make everyone smarter. THOSE THINGS NEVER HAPPENED!

Taking your claim at face value, the "coders" have to somehow believe that all of the knowledge they were required to have to become world changing coders is not relevant to who they are or what they do for a living. They must believe that somehow you can circumvent all educational requirements and shit coders right out of high school that can not only understand the world, but extremely complex problems, and further be able to begin mapping out solutions to these complex problems. That is right! Taking you at your word these "coders" must believe that they have no education to back their abilities and _anyone_ can do their job with minimal education and a minimal coding skills.

I am not taking you at your word because history and facts do not back your word. Lets look at reality shall we? You can't teach physics without teaching them math first, and you can't teach someone to write novels without teaching them grammar and composition. You can't teach someone to be a mechanical engineer by simply giving them a drag and drop CAD program, and you can't teach chemistry by giving someone a drag and drop periodical table of elements. These are things we know so well that we don't even question them. We can argue semantics after the fact like what CAD program is better, but we don't expect a kid to be able to find the area of a rectangle without being able to multiply _FIRST_.

Based on what we know, there is a rational conclusion that "You can't make someone a competent programmer by giving them a drag and drop program to "develop code" in either. This is such a basic premise that I'm astounded that people like you will claim "but it's for the children" when all empirical evidence shows that it's NOT for the children. It's to make cheap obedient servants for the masters!

References for IQ here and here. Reference for intentional institutionalized education problems here. The issue of institutional attempts to shortcut education is here.

I met the good doctor back in 1974 at a bookstore on 71st street in Miami Beach*. He really was an incredible wit and raconteur, there is no way I am going to go up against his ability to formulate a plausible explanation. I mean really how can you dispute someone who could come up with the ancient Greeks prophesying Einstein ? http://geobeck.tripod.com/fron...

But he should have known better in the essay you linked just the same. A well educated person in the 1700s could have made the same claim that it was wonderful to live in a time when at last we understood the universe In the . He could then point to the work of Newton, Galileo and Copernicus and proclaim they had set the heavens on a mechanical basis, and Von Leeuwenhoek had revealed the microscopic basis of life and Franklin had deciphered and tamed electricity. In both cases "The relativity of wrong wouldn't apply to things you were actually relatively spot on about, but rather about the things you think you understand but don't. Asimov really shouldn't have made the claim given his expertise. He was a biochemist, so when he says the world is well understood he would need to exclude vast sections of his own field. When he wrote that essay protein folding was still nearly impossible to model for anything but very simple cases. We had not yet decoded the human genome (we are still at the threshold of understanding), and when you spoke of climate change you were likely to be as worried about the next glaciation as warming.

*Rather sad it was a good bookstore now it's a fast food joint.

You didn't look very hard.

http://kanishkb.tripod.com/win...

There are others. It's old in internet time, though.

Indeed.

"An Underground History of American Education" covers this exact problem.

* PDF
* Dead tree format

We're called the Sagan Youth Boys

Anything like? http://propagander2.tripod.com...

It probably is not. Deep inside, the narcissist is aware that his life is an artifact, a confabulated sham, a vulnerable cocoon.

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg...

http://www.amazon.com/Have-Fun...
http://infohost.nmt.edu/~shipm...

http://disciplinedminds.tripod...

From the last:
"Who are you going to be? That is the question.
      In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."
      The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy.
      Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue one's own social vision in today's corporate society. He shows how an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional employee can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job."

Educator John Taylor Gatto has explained both in writing, (PDF link), and in Death by Pedagogy, as well as in many interviews available on YouTube, that the purpose of the education system is to extend childhood and discourage critical thinking. This is done in order to produce more compliant citizens; otherwise their innovation and inventiveness would both disrupt capitalists' ability to control markets, and deny corporations a complacent and pliable workforce.

Before you dismiss this as just another wild-eyed conspiracy theory you should check out what he has to say. For one thing he gives copious references, most of which can be checked, and most of which use such direct language that there is no possible ambiguity as to the intent of the authors. For another thing, it is perhaps the best and simplest explanation for why the Ohio legislature might enact such otherwise inexplicable legislation.

Ask yourself 'cui bono'. Who will be best served by a citizenry that is less and less critical, and less and less scientifically competent? Then look back at the education you received, look at what has happened to schooling in the meantime, look at what is happening to education now, and place it all into the context that Gatto creates. if after that you can honestly call it a conspiracy theory, go in peace.

Tracing the phone calls hasn't worked very well, but the way to go is to follow the money. Flooding them with honeypot credit card numbers would generate a trail that might be followable (e.g. have an FTC web page that'll generate a credit card number and billing name/address, and have Visa track the merchant information for anybody trying to process a charge against those numbers; the risk is that you have to make sure those numbers don't get used for fraud, even if they're set up to always reject charges.)

I don't know how much information the scammers try to get, such as SSNs; generating fake ones of those has its own risks, though it's always fun to give them 078-05-1120 or Richard Nixon's SSN 567-68-0515. It turns out there is a publicly available official list of SSNs of dead people, which is intended to detect people using invalid SSNs, but it's possible that Rachel's gang doesn't bother filtering on it, considering that they don't filter on phone numbers of people who've told them not to call back.

What?

AC wrote: "Jenny Mcarthy is a free thinker ... and embodies the best tennants of 19th century science, when people made decisions based on their observations and in light of the best known understanding at the time. Today we have something akin to a blind belief in whatever the church, ughh i mean experts happen to be handing out at the time. Today an expert more often than nought is somebody who is paid to lobby for a paticular world view. Think about it in 2000 all the experts were saying the stock market is going to be going up and up and up. In 2008 all the experts were saying that real estate is a can't loose proposition, and I just happen to have a house you can buy. Stop believing in experts. Believe in yourself. If it is cloudy, and your skin is getting wet when you stand outside, it is probably raining outside despite the fact that the weather experts are on the radio right now saying you will have a clear and sunny day outside. Stand up and have the courage to say it's raining, fuck the experts. Jenny Mcarthy is a hero. So in spite of the fact that I have no advanced degree in meterology, I feel that I can accurately tell if it is raining or not. This used to be common sense, but today there is a global witch hunt on for whomever decides to believe in their own observations vs what the experts in the media are saying."

Conflict-of-interest definitely makes this all harder to sort through. Compare with the book "Disclipined Minds"
http://disciplinedminds.tripod...
"Who are you going to be? That is the question.
In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."
The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy.
Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue one's own social vision in today's corporate society. He shows how an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional employee can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job."

Other social problems with mainstream science:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-j...

All that said, a lot of time the experts are right -- for example, expert Civil Engineers designing and building bridges. Thinking is hard work, and a lot of "free thinking" may be re-inventing plausible but otherwise bad ideas. Perhaps the more variables involved, and the less we know about them, the more problematical the notion of "Expertise" becomes, other than to admit ignorance (which does not sound that impressive)? However, 2000 years ago, perhaps bridge building was more by trial and error, same as much medicine today? Certainly Cathedral building shows a process of trial and error before civil engineering became better understood in terms of materials and structures.

Here is a related diagram about different types of problem domains, where perhaps bridge building today is in one area but medicine in another:

From the classic 1936 movie adaptation of HG Wells "the Shape of Things to Come"

http://leonscripts.tripod.com/scripts/THINGSTOCOME.htm
closing paragraphs:

PART XVI

Finale

An observatory at a high point above Everytown. A telescopic
mirror of the night sky showing the cylinder as a very small
speck against a starry background. Cabal and Passworthy stand
before this mirror.

CABAL: "There! There they go! That faint gleam of light."

Pause.

PASSWORTHY: "I feel--what we have done is--monstrous."

CABAL: "What they have done is magnificent."

PASSWORTHY: "Will they return?"

CABAL: "Yes. And go again. And again--until the landing
can be made and the moon is conquered. This is only a
beginning."

PASSWORTHY: "And if they don't return--my son, and your
daughter? What of that, Cabal?"

CABAL (with a catch in his voice but resolute): "Then
presently--others will go."

PASSWORTHY: "My God! Is there never to be an age of
happiness? Is there never to be rest?"

CABAL: "Rest enough for the individual man. Too much of it
and too soon, and we call it death. But for MAN no rest and
no ending. He must go on--conquest beyond conquest. This
little planet and its winds and ways, and all the laws of
mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about
him, and at last out across immensity to the stars. And when
he has conquered all the deeps of space and all the mysteries
of time--still he will be beginning."

PASSWORTHY: "But we are such little creatures. Poor
humanity. So fragile--so weak."

CABAL: "Little animals, eh?"

PASSWORTHY: "Little animals."

CABAL: "If we are no more than animals--we must snatch at
our little scraps of happiness and live and suffer and pass,
mattering no more--than all the other animals do--or have
done." (He points out at the stars.) "It is that--or this?
All the universe--or nothingness.... Which shall it be,

In case of some weird and exotic laws not knowing it should exempt you:
It is illegal to play dominoes on Sunday.
Disclaimer: Dunno if that list is correct, but it is at least somewhat funny.