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Alabama Schools to be First in US to Get XO Laptop
CountryGeek passed us a link to a story in the Birmingham News, saying that schools in the Alabama city will be the first US students to make use of the XO laptop. The piece touches on a bit of the project's history, and seems to indicate the Birmingham school district is ready to make a serious commitment to these devices. "Langford has asked the City Council to approve $7 million for the laptops and a scholarship program that would give Birmingham students with a C average or above a scholarship to college or tech school of their choice. The City Council has not yet approved the funding. The rugged, waterproof computers will be distributed to students on April 15, Langford said, and children will be allowed to take them home. If a computer is lost, the school system can disable it, rendering it useless, Langford said. Students will turn in their computers at the end of their eighth-grade year."
Alabama you say? That's entirely natural. After all they were supposed to be for the third world... ;-)
I don't recall OLPC allowing any of these things in the US, it was starting strictly in 3rd world countries wasn't it?
I hope some kids take advantage of this and the scholarship, I'm sure it's a dream come true to some parents.
It is also called Down's laptop, for you biological types out there.
:p
As soon as teenagers get a hold of it, it will be called the XXX laptop...
I thought a C meant that you were doing exactly the work that's expected of you (aka, Average). So now they're going to award scholarships for performing like you should? Crazy!
This guy's the limit!
What part of: "The City Council has not yet approved the funding." = "schools in the Alabama city will be the first US students to make use of the XO laptop."
The opening up of the university system to all and sundry has already lowered standards and resulted in grade inflation. Just compare the rigour of an undergraduate education a half-century ago to the situation now where anyone (even me) can breeze through four years without a challenge. Is paying for college for people with a C-average instead of directing them towards only vocational training--as in many other Western countries--a good idea?
Why on Earth do grade school students need to be issued a laptop? Early education should be about learning the basics. I remember not being able to use a calculator even in college Calculus classes as the professor thought it made people lazy and dependent on them. I do agree that schools should have computers, but every student?!?! Computer labs work just fine and cost a lot less than issuing every kid a computer.
gasmonso http://religiousfreaks.com/Comment removed based on user account deletion
I could see helping those students to head on out to a trade/tech school, so they can become trailer truck drivers or welders, but c'mon!
It's getting to the point where the college degree is a relatively unimpressive feat in today's world.
Should every child go to college? Or should every capable child go to college.
A C average is nothing to be excited about. Funding like this should be reserved for putting our brightest in college.
Good thing they didn't approve this.. yet.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So let me get this straight, C average or above to get rewarded with laptops and scholarships?
Way to keep setting that bar higher and higher, America! You can win by being average!
(In all honesty, I think affording more kids accessibility to laptops and University is a great thing. Just why not make it universal, rather than "C average or above," which makes it a bit comical... Those with F averages aren't going to be qualify for University in the first place. In fact, at least here in Canada, I believe those with C averages wouldn't get in, either. Oh wait, making higher education accessible to all is probably gonna be shot down by Bush as being too socialistic, just like the children's health plan thing... [Shakes head...])
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
"SHOOT i aint neva seen one of deese befoe, lets see now..says here we need ELECI..ELECTRICI..ELECTRI-CITY for use.Aw hell we dont got those over here"
Oh I come from Alabama with an XO on my knee.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
Just to inform the discussion, note that now nearly one in five people are on the net:
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
This link comes from the Metagovernment's FAQ, where they point out that when most people have net access, there will really be no reason to maintain representative democracy.
http://www.metagovernment.org/faq/
Once we can all participate in a connected network, why appoint other people to make the big decisions for us?
YEAH! Hopefully this is a step towards breaking windows from completely strangling the technical life out of that state. Everything else about Alabama is free and easy compared to most other states - maybe it finally catches up with software. (I live in Kaliforniastan) BTW I bought 4 XO laptops (2 for me, 2 for giveaway) in hopes that they could be used in the States in the future. I don't care about third world, the XO will be probably used there as improvised land warrior communications systems to more effectively kill people.
The first thing most of these kids will do is "lose" these laptops, and sell them.
The lockout daemon (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070218-8872.html) will by bypassed / hacked, just like everything else.
If not, simply wipe all data and start fresh, or start gutting the machine (a little solder never stopped anybody).
As I recall from my high school experience, getting a C requires me to do absolutely no studying at all (except half-listening in class). Is there any motivation when the goal set is so LOW? If we truly want the brilliant students to succeed, they need to be challenged, not bored to death...
At least this should make them cheaper on eBay as more show up. :-)
HelpMeConfess
I just heard that the governor has signed a law in Alabama raising the drinking age to 35. He wants to keep alcohol out of the high schools.
just a joke.
That's an awful low bar to ask them to meet. If I only need to make a C to get a scholarship, that's likely only as hard as I'm going to work for it.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
This is a feel-good measure, nothing more. Tossing a laptop into a mix of bad teachers, and bad schools is not going to improve anything. There are several major problems, none of them technology related, that have made public education a colossal failure:
1) Most of the people who are teaching subjects, have their primary education in "education."
2) Teacher's unions.
3) School policies that don't allow proper discipline for disruptive students.
4) A legal system that actually listens to parents who sue when schools properly punish their kids for misbehaving.
5) Government monopolies that make it financially impossible for most parents to afford to send their kids to private schools or homeschool them.
But it's ok, technology will save the day. It couldn't do a damn thing for other social problems like pirating copyrighted materials, but it'll be able to take on... entrenched bureaucracies, good ol'boy networks, unions, crufty legal codes and parents who have no ability to hold their kids responsible for their behavior and are willing to shout and sue at the drop of a dime. Go technology, you modern day messiah of secular America.
As a Birmingham, AL resident and software developer, I am disgusted by this waste of tax dollars. I love tech. I live tech. But laptops for kids that can scarcely ready seems a stretch. The Birmingham city school systems are already in a financial crunch and face rapidly declining enrollment. Birmingham politics is corrupt on levels you can scarcely imagine. I won't even drag this conversation into those details. In short, Birmingham City Schools are now in a position to close approximately 20 schools for the coming school year due to declining enrollment and funding issues, yet feel the need to invest in underpowered laptops for the kids in some sort of twisted PR ploy. No doubt the powers that be will also toss the maintenance and service contracts on these things to some trumped up company designed to pad their own wallets. The only consolation in living in this kind of corrupt political environment is that small business can thrive relatively unimpeded by these morons. To quote one of the wise pimps from the film "American Pimp", "When n****s run a town, they just let shit slide." (He was referring to DC / Marion Barry as I recall).
So where will be the next place in the US to get XO's? Mississippi, West Virginia, or El Paso Integrated School District?
Probably not EPISD, they're too busy not giving the kids school lunches ("Nutritional mid-day snack"?) while taking the Federal school lunch program money. Among many other types of incompetence.
You're right, we don't know what electricity is. The aerospace capital of the U.S. (huntsville, AL) is illuminated by millions of candles. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, and the dozens upon dozens of Aerospace Engineering companies that work on building such things as new fighter jets, helicopters, armored troop vehicles, jet engines, rocket engines, etc. all do their work by candle light. I actually sent this letter by the U.S. mail to my friend in California who typed it up and posted it here for me. (You're welcome).
One Zune Per Child... Thanks alot Zune Tattoo Guy!!!!!!!!!!!
I offered my help to the mayor in putting an implementation plan together. This is a newly elected mayor (a month or 2) trying to put his mark on the city. A few weeks ago he promoted a guy who cut grass to run city maintenance. The guy now has hundreds of people working for him and a multi-million dollar budget. Meanwhile Birmingham is in the process of shutting down 20 schools. No exaggeration there DAGS. The mayor is also trying to get a sales tax increase to help with school funding. Nothing he's done so far makes sense unless you consider it showboating. So anyway, the mayor is clueless and trying to shake things up. His implementation plan is to give the kids a laptop. That's it. They're supposed to teach themselves because the computers are so simple. This quote FTA sums up the response I got from him: "Get the computers, get them in the children's hands and get out of the way," he said. This is a common attitude among educators and politicians. Computers can cure any education problem. Teachers even like the idea of independent learning. It leaves more time for them to piddle around on the web while the kids are piddling around on the web. I offered to help define how the computers could be used within their curriculum. I also offered to provide educational software that fit with their curriculum. All free to the city. What I got was the typical uneducated response I half heartedly expected. The big shame here is that the kids involved are mostly poor, minority and at risk of ending up in prison at least once before they turn 20. What they really need is old fashioned from the book teaching and a lot of discipline.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
April 15th, huh? How appropriate. Kids can read or write; send 'em a laptop!
Stupid sexy Flanders.
If you think this is the first open source project for Alabama, you obviously have never heard of Gaim (now Pidgin) or Asterisk, both of which were started by Mark Spencer (an Auburn grad from Huntsville). Phorum also got its start in Huntsville as well.
"Think about how stupid the average person is, then realize that half of 'em are stupider than that!" - George Carlin.
In my job I use routinely computers for things like solving differential equations. I know the basics on how this works. I know how algorithms like Runge-Kutta, Adams-Moulton, Bulirsch-Stoer, etc, work. However, I have never done these calculations by hand. What would be the point in that?
What students need to learn is how to get results from the calculations, they need to know which method to use, they need to know if the results make sense. For that, they need to learn the basics, of course, but they do not need to extensive practice in performing basic work.
You're lucky that you and your Calculus professor weren't in a Civil Engineering course, or you would have to dig the minerals, grind, mix, bake, etc, just to get cement.
So you're saying it's got the nappy headed hos thing going for it?
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
It's going to suck for those lower income parents having to shell out $200 when their kid loses the laptop or it is stolen. Or is the school going to absorb that cost? The article didn't make it clear, other than that they would disable it.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I guess 'Bombingham' will reenter the social vernacular?
You have failed to provide any supporting evidence that being trained in the "Classics" is of any real tangible benefit and therefore your conclusion that the quality of education has been lessened is unsubstantiated at best.
Here's a template for you to use to prove a prima facie case:
S - significance - how big is the problem?
H - harm - is there any real harm?
I - inherency - is the problem built into "the system" or is it just a coincidental occurance ?
T - topicality - is your symptom really related to the problem?
S - solvency - would the problem actually be solved?
bottom line is that you haven't shown us $HIT$ and therefore your argument falls flat.
Been there, Done that, Sold the t-shirt to the next idiot in line
I live in Birmingham, AL and think that it is a great idea to be equipping our children for life in the real world. Mayor Larry Langford's efforts, to this end, should be lauded.
On the other hand, and there is always another hand, this particular instance is a shell game. Birmingham (and sadly Alabama in general) has been the victim of poor leadership and frequent deception. In this case newly elected Mayor Larry Langford, formerly mayor of a nearby, poorer, decaying locality, rented an apartment in Birmingham (but never lived there) in order to become eligible to be elected in Birmingham as mayor. He has been pushing a dome stadium for years (10+) believing that he can attract a professional football team(never NFL, mind you) and turn Birmingham, AL into a tourist attraction.
In order to do this he wants to raise sales taxes on everything (food and necessities included). This is a regressive tax on the poor and uneducated who will not enjoy the fruits (if there are any fruits) of their taxation.
He has been trying to pass this for years and now he thinks he has it.
Birmingham cannot let him distract them with the XO laptops under the right shell when there is a dangerous, expensive, disasterous dome stadium under the other one.
Laptops=good idea
Dome stadium/Birmingham as a tourist destination=WTF???
cabalist
Airbus is about to start manufacturing aircraft in Alabama. ThyssenKrupp is well established. Mercedes makes cars their.
I was stationed in Alabama for a year. While there, I had a world-class Shakespearean theater at my back door. I loved living in Alabama.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
1957.
Less than ten years after the GI Bill opened up post-secondary education to a broad spectrum of the [white, male] middle class.
What makes you think that undergraduate education in the fifties was all that demanding outside a handful of elite colleges and universities? There wasn't much of a foundation on which to build.
"[T]wo qualities common to educational reformers since World War II: nostalgia and amnesia.
They look back through a haze to some imagined golden era of American education when we were "a nation of learners.." What Happened to America's Public Schools?
Our XO laptop Alabamalords!
Just kidding. But aside from all of the complaints about this here (which I don't quite understand), wouldn't everyone agree that HAVING a laptop is better than NOT having a laptop? Wouldn't we all be able to agree that having access to a global Internet community is better than NOT having it? We are allowing more and more human beings to tap into a collective grid, to exchange ideas, thoughts and knowledge. I have no idea how some could see this as bad or unnecessary.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Smartass!
/. is competing with LOTR on my DVD. Please forgive teh slip.
I've got the 'flu, I'm chugging nyquil, and
(And yes, the "teh" was intentional.)
668: Neighbour of the Beast
...of some moments ago.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Some areas of Alabama have among the nation's highest income to cost-of-living ratios. Huntsville has the nation's highest concentration of engineers and PhDs. Birmingham attracts surgeons and medical researchers from all over the world. They may be transplants, but they're here now, and they're unlikely to leave.
Sometimes the (conservative) politics and (evangelical) religion get me down, but the conservatism of the South doesn't necessarily mean Bush conservatism, and Southern Baptism is more often inherited than converted to. The vast majority of suburban Alabamians don't give a crap about gay marriage (for instance) one way or another.
The rural Dukes of Hazard wasteland you're probably thinking about can still be found, but only far away from population centers. On the other hand, a native of Greenwich Village would probably feel at home on the Southside of Birmingham as long as they didn't listen to talk radio.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
Actually, they WERE originally barred from the OLPC project. First it was a $100 PC... and no you can't buy one. Then it was a $200 PC... and no you can't buy one. Then it was a $400 computer, and they would also give one to someone in a third world country... and would you please please pretty please buy one?
Now that the OLPC is tanking, because third world countries don't like to be given junk which will sideline their students to having no worthwhile job skills (meaning, they won't know how to use Windows or MS Office)... nobody is interested in the OLPC. Now instead, they are looking at the $200 Intel Classmate, which is almost twice as powerful at the same pricepoint... and it uses Windows instead of a gimpy and non-working version of Teh Lunix.
Seems OLPC really isn't "all about teh kidz". It's really about trying to force people in the third world to use Lunix, because they can't force people in the first world to use Lunix.
If it were REALLY "all about the kids", the OLPC guys would be overjoyed at seeing Intel selling $200 laptops and MS providing Windows and Office in a $30 package. But... it's not about the kids. It's about teh Lunix, and milking a huge salary out of their NPO.
How long will it be before a student hacks their laptop and either makes it dual boot or launches their own DDOS attack against their classmates?
Should we begin the online pool?
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
Birmingham Alabama...
:)
By this I mean Birmingham City, Football (sorry Soccer for our USA readers) in the UK.
As a 'blues' (their nickname) fan for the past 30 years, this year they are complete cow dung. They couldn't beat the Villa and would probablly lose to the 'Baggies' (West Bromwich Albion) if they drew them in the Cup. Their win over Spurs at the weekend was a fluke. The club needs a new stadium badly. Perhaps this might be an easy way for them to get one. They don't even have to change their name.
Sorry Alabama, only joking.
Just F'n great.... Everywhere that Larry Langford gets himself elected (or cheats his way into), taxes mysteriously start going up. Just a year or two ago he was behind another sales tax increase, and now that he's mayor, he wants to jack 'em up again....just so he can give out freebies and scholarships to kids who aren't doing much more than "showing up to class". He's also cranking up the amounts collected on business licenses etc for the purpose of building some idiotic "domed stadium" that the town doesn't need (much less can afford). Now I'm all for helping kids that strive for excellence and hard work...but for C students????? As everyone here so gladly points out, it's not like Alabamians are made of money. Oh, and as for those of you who just love to make fun of us Alabamians/southerners in general... People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones!
Talk about a worn out stereotype. statemaster.com defines the lynching statistic cited as Number of total people killed by lynching from 1882 to 1968. Per capita figures expressed per 1 million population.
Hardly relevant or timely but thanks for promoting the racist stereotype.
California (statemaster.com stats) #1 in Forcible rape #1 in Gonorrhea Cases #1 in Suicides #2 in Cumulative AIDS Cases All Ages #2 in Syphilis Cases #3 in Deaths due to HIV #3 in New AIDS Cases All Ages #4 in Motor vehicle theft (per capita) #4 in Prevalence of Poor Mental Health 2nd to last in Overall Child Health Status The education stats aren't anything to celebrate over either. Yeah, I bet everyone in Alabama wishes they could be as sophisticated as those out West.
You're just lucky you put it on the internet where nobody from Alabama can see it.
Nope, New England is the place to be, if you can handle the cold.
You're a lot smarter than me.
On an up-note, I'd encourage you to relocate to Alabama. You'd find a lot of peers there.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
"Hey Billy Bob, you got any of those 'moddy points' left over? I's got me a troublemaker speaking ill of the Home."
/. now available in pictograms? The only thing they can do well is surrender. =) /Yup, you know it: I'm from Massachusetts.
"Yup, Let me get'em loaded."
Amazing, they can't read but get mod points? What,
Well, thing was, not only did they do Shakespeare, they had actually heard of *other* playwrights.
Yes, I know, completely shocking, but there you are. I mean, I got to hear about some guy called Ibsen, and another guy called The Idiot, but I may be getting my plays mixed up.
After all, I was in Alabama.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Yeah, it couldn't possibly be a jibe at the racist guy. For, I dunno, being racist or something.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
California has more people.
California has more forcible rape, cars, whisky bought, etc etc etc. That's why, when people make comparisons, they use the per capita rate. That's the rate per person.
You'll notice, if you check that California comes 37th, as opposed to Alabama's 18th.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Pal, you live in Huntsville, not Alabama. Kidding. I live in Trussville. I have a lot of respect for Huntsville - it's a beautiful city. Downtown is very clean and there is literally NOTHING like the Space and Rocket Center.
You need to look at the rates there genius, not the overall number. Of course California is going to be higher than all the others, they have more people! In rape, gonorrhea, suicides, AIDS cases, syphilis, HIV deaths, and new AIDS cases California ranks middle-of-the-pack to near the top when you look at the per capita rates. Other than motor vehicle theft (California has by far the most vehicles per capita so no surprise there) I couldn't find the other stats so I don't know. But if you're honestly arguing that the deep south doesn't have a problem with health and education, you're crazy. And for the record I don't live in California, and in general I really dislike California.
It may be bait - make this announcement and wait for intel+microsoft to rescue them in a display of patriotic fervour.
A number of those don't seem to be per capita. In which case it's only natural for California to be the most, as it is the most populous state.
i highly recommend reading this article... an article on larry langford's past by our local alt weekly political writer langford bankrupted his last city he was mayor of... he wasn't even truly a resident of birmingham when he was running for mayor. he has two investigations looking into his previous actions right now... if i were olpc, i wouldn't have anything to do with this man. he has big visions and not much follow through, other than bankrupting whatever he touches. i hope this won't be an egg in their face when it fails. i would specifically read about his previous political computer endeavours with "computer help for kids." it's a company he was running with richard scrushy (his wiki entry), the man in jail now for bribing our democratic governor and bankrupting healthsouth. there's some good info on it in that first article... it's why he's being investigated. and alabama isn't as bad as ya'll make it out to be... at least not the metropolitan areas. it is considered third world once you get down in the black belt in the western side of the state.
Not to mention the statistics do not take into account differences in culture which may result in variances between actual forcible rape and the number of forcible rapes reported.
This is, easily, the stupidest thing anyone has ever posted on slashdot.
Please don't discuss this subject again, it's obvious you have no idea what you're talking about. Don't even try to claim you do, because the first thing I'll do is post the numbers for jobs that require a BA on Monster.com, or jobs.com, and the ones that don't.
Then of course, you'll try to make some stupid fucking excuse for why you spewed what you did on the screen, but the reality is, you're ignorant. That's the only way you could have intentionally posted such patently wrong nonsense.
Those other third world states need some of them XO's too.
Probably what will happen is that they'll get hollowed out and the third-graders will use them to haul their crystal meth in. And drug dealers if stopped can pose as distributors and say those laptops are for the children. Won't someone think of the children?
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
#37 Foricble rape
#32 Gonorrhea
#42 Suicide
#8 AIDS cases (which correlates highly with %urban areas)
#13 Syphilis Rate (AL is #12)
No rate data for total HIV deaths.
Poor Mental Health is a self-report statistic (AL is #12) & CA is #43 in serious mental illness per capita (AL is #16).
And, btw I do not live in CA.
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
Yes! That is correct, Alabama is indeed a third world country! Ignorance, intolerance, and racism are rampant! It is horrible in Alabama! "How do I know", you ask. I live here in virtual slavery as a Systems Analyst, so what ever you do stay away at all costs! Please stay on the left coast and in Yankee land. We will all be happier.
"At the moment it's just a notion, but with a bit of backing I think I could turn it into a concept, and then an idea. ..."
Until a check is signed, or maybe until I can reach my hand into the wound of a crucified kid-with-XO, I wouldn't count on it.
I do *hope* this happens, and it's clearly not impossible to find systems with laptop-per-kid schemes (like Maine), but this one is couched in such vagaries I'd rather not say much about it at all, until / unless purchase orders are completed, notarized, dabbed with the blood of a majority of councilmen (or whatever body), and on display both to the in-person public and online.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No sir, I don't like it. Kids are too used to faster computers. They'll take them home, they and their parents will complain that you can't do anything at all on them (when they really mean they're unfamiliar with the features), and it'll mean bad publicity for OLPC. Just because it can't play World of Warcraft or come preloaded with Microsoft Word.
This will give the Intel-Microsoft non-charitable for-profit competition a considerable advantage.
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I'm planning to have XO's in the hands of every student at my school (Oak Hill Academy; central North Carolina) outfitted by the end of this year.
I might buy that Birmingham will be doing the first large scale public school deployment (Go Birmingham!!) in the U. S. but not the first U. S. students.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
The deep south doesn't have any more problem with education or health than any other area of the country.
And while we're "looking at the rates there genius, LOL!!1" how about looking at some of the rates the original post listed. #5 in Lynchings? How many lynchings occurred in Alabama last year or even last decade? Maybe one or two? How many gang killings or mob hits occurred in New York City alone last year? Percent below poverty level and income per capita--fascinating, but do these account for the fact that the cost of living in Alabama is amongst the LOWEST in the nation? How about land taxes? I own 90 acres of land here in Alabama, guess how much I paid in taxes last year? As I recall it was in the neighborhood of $250. And as I recall, there was widespread discontent and anger because the taxes went UP significantly from where they USED to be.
I can sit here and go through every single statistic posted and point out the flaws in it, but I shouldn't have to-- I thought you sophisticated, educated, and intelligent Northern and West Coast folks were supposed to know that there are "lies, damn lies, and statistics"? Guess the "46th in Bachelor's Degree Percentage" doesn't mean so damn much after all.
Yes, poverty level takes into account cost of living.
I don't know why you think I'm ragging on Alabama, I've been there and it's mostly good, especially when compared to neighboring states. You have some excellent schools and some beautiful land. I wasn't there for long but the people seemed very friendly. But statistically it is significantly poorer, less educated, and less healthy than most states, which is common for the Deep South. For example, from the original poster, Alabama ranks #1 in diabetes cases per capita, #7 in obestity, and 46th in the percentage of people that have bachelor's degrees. Those are facts, whether or not you want to recognize them. There's no massaging statistics, those are simple numerical measurements. If you would like to point out the flaws in any of those statistics I am more than happy to listen.
And for the record, not that it should matter at all, I'm from Colorado. If you don't think there's a difference between a 14% obesity rate and 24% obesity rate, or 8.9% of the population having diabetes vs. 4.9%, or having 9 deaths per 1,000 births vs. 6, or having 36% of the population with bachelor or better degrees vs. 22% you're absolutely insane. Those are massive differences.