The problem is that you cannot design curriculum to teach critical thinking. It is something that someone must be able to do in order to teach it. Additionally, it is not something anyone can say, "If you see X, Y and Z being taught, critical thinking is being taught."
Personally, I think the best thing that can be done to address a problem like this is to encourage people to go to snopes.com whenever they see a story like this. Not because Snopes is the be-all and end-all of accuracy, but because if you read enough Snopes critiques of urban legends and internet hoaxes you begin to see a pattern that allows you to recognize the elements of stories that have been embroidered to make a point (whether they started out as a true story or were made up out of whole cloth).
Excuse me where did I say there should be no regulation?
Why is it on this board that whenever someone suggests that many of the problems in the U.S. and/or Europe are the result of excessive government regulation someone thinks it is insightful to say something along the lines of, "Oh yeah, well go live in Somalia if that is what you want." When in fact that was not what the person said they wanted.
Both North Korea and Somalia illustrate the same problem. The complete and utter absence of the rule of law. The fact of the matter is that once the number and scope of laws and government regulation exceed some point, the collapse of the rule of law is inevitable unless those laws and regulations are reduced. The U.S. and the EU are both well beyond that point. The Tea Party and the Occupy movement are both the result of people realizing that the rule of law is breaking down.
So, we put other morally bankrupt people in charge of what we can and can't buy? Yeah, I can see how that is a great idea./s
Really? Your solution to the fact that people are selfish and greedy and more interested in lining their own pockets than in avoiding poisoning and killing their fellow man is to give some of them the power to decide who can and cannot be in business?
Clearly the housing market collapse and attendant stock market crash were a result of the big banks suffering from too much government oversight/regulation.
Or not.
Doh!
Well, as a matter of fact it was. The housing bubble was a result of the government pressuring banks to make loans to people with poor credit compounded by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (organizations created be federal legislation) bundling up high risk mortgages and selling them as government backed securities. I am simplifying the situation significantly, but without the involvement of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage derivatives would never have had sufficient trust in the market to take off the way they did. The problems with Fannie and Freddie were compounded by politicians, such as Chris Dodd and Barnie Frank (they are not the only ones, they are just the ones I remember because they were chosen by Congress in 2009-2010 to craft the legislation to "fix" the problem that caused the meltdown), who intervened to prevent any action being taken when several other politicians started to suspect there was a problem in 2003.
It may be a simple way to put it, but is "get the money out of politics" any more insightful of an actual course of action? My point was that if the government would stop regulating every aspect of our lives, corporations would face more competition from small businesses and would find less value in spending money on politicians than in some other use for that money. Government regulation always increases the disadvantage small companies (especially one or two person operations) have when it comes to competing with large companies, yet large companies are almost always the ones guilty of the action that causes people to call for government regulation. So, here is the pattern, large company does something unethical/dangerous, people call for government regulations on that industry, small companies face greater obstacles to compete with large company, large company makes even more money, rinse and repeat.
Ok, a couple of points. First, increasing government power/regulations increases corporate power because increased government regulations make it harder for small businesses to function. You complain about the lack of power for the individual and then call for governments more like those in Europe, which are less responsive to the people than that of the U.S.
The House passed a budget, the Senate never took it up. They never even considered it. All they did was vote down Obama's budget. When the Democrats controlled the House for two years with Obama as President, they never passed a budget.
The Democrat plan for years has been to pass some outrageous bill to increase the size of the federal government by huge amounts and then get the Republicans to "compromise" by only increasing the size and scope of the federal government by a little bit. The problem is that the Republicans' constituents want the size and scope of the government reduced. If you are happy with an ever larger, more powerful, more intrusive government, then support the Democrats. Personally, I think the government has long past the point of having too much interference in my day to day life.
So, why is Occupy on Wall Street and not on Capital Hill? The problem you are talking about is with the politicians, not the bankers. Were you a supporter of the Tea Party? Because they were complaining about what you are saying is why you consider Occupy to represent you and they had a plan as to what to do about it.
Right, because, after all, the fact that Obama wants to spend trillions of dollars every year (based on the budget he submitted earlier this year, which is the only budget proposed by a Democrat in the last three years) that we don't have is behaving ethically? Or the fact that the Democrats in the Senate refuse to pass a budget at all because it would reveal their spending priorities to the American people, even though they are legally bound to do so, is ethical?
So basically Obama, when he says "$40 in your weekly paycheck" is targeting those who make over $104,000 a year ($40 is 2 percent of $2000 and $2000 times 52 is $104,000), and you say he is not targeting the rich?
you will have to make it up later one way or another--either through reduced SS benefits or increased SS taxes to make up for the deficit.
Nah, they are going to make it up by making our children(or at this point, more likely our grandchildren, they have already spent all the money our children are going to earn) pay more in SS taxes.
What do you base this idea that "paychecks are normally bi-weekly" on ? Over the course of my working life, I have been paid monthly, bi-weekly, weekly, and semi-monthly, but by far the majority of my employers paid me on a weekly basis.
If this cut means $40 in each weekly paycheck, you are doing pretty well for your self. It is only a 2% cut in the Social Security tax withholding. For the average U.S. household, that is less than $25 a week. So apparently, Obama is targeting this tax cut to the rich, since his target demographic will get $40 a week from it? The other great part of this is that the House was getting beat up for not passing this two month extension, when they had passed a one year extension. Of course, what I love is that the people pushing this are the people who cry about "ending social security as we know it" every time someone proposes a plan to make social security more likely to be long term sustainable.
Really? What about the Occupy movement represents you? Borrowing lots of money to get a degree in puppetry? Getting upset when those truly on the economic bottom of the ladder (the homeless) show up and try to share in the food donated to the protest?
Logic goes that if anyone is allowed conceal carry,...
No, the logic goes that people who are planning to shoot up a bunch of people are not going to be deterred by the fact that some place is a "gun-free" zone. As a matter of fact, that makes that place a better choice for shooting up a bunch of people because you know that no one else there will be armed. The argument is that these places should allow those who have been granted a concealed carry permit (a process that usually involves some evaluation of the mental state of the individual and whether or not they have a history of encounters with law enforcement) because then not everybody there would be solely a potential victim.
Of course, the big part of this argument comes from the stories very few people hear of where someone tried to shoot up a place where there were people carrying concealed weapons. Within six months of the first Virginia Tech shootings there were two or three similar attempts that did not make the news because the shooter only got off about six shots before someone with a concealed carry license pulled their weapon and shot him. The thing is, every time someone tries this in a "gun-free" zone, there are a lot of deaths, every time someone tries this where someone is legally concealed carrying there are at most three deaths (two victims and the perpetrator).
Except that I remember that there was not that much outcry from the general populace to "do something". There was a lot of "how did this happen?" The big outcry for security theater was from politicians. It would not have been very hard to sell the American people on the idea that the anti-terror measures that work were enough. Most people recognize, or can be easily shown, that the terrorists 9/11 plan would not work today. Any attempt to hijack an airplane today with weapons that only kill one at a time, and that not very efficiently (box cutters, the weapon of the 9/11 hijackers, are not very efficient weapons), would be met by all of the remaining passengers swamping the would be hijacker.
The few that they actually won were ones where it was proven the farmers knew their seeds were contaminated and kept growing them anyway.
What group is that? I know the Occupy movement claims to represent the 99%, but I do not personally know anybody who considers the Occupy movement to represent them (but then everybody I know actually works for a living).
There are two primary reasons. The first is the people who are afraid that GM crops (along with other technological breakthroughs) will destroy their arguments as to why the majority of people should allow faceless bureaucrats to decide how they can live their lives. The second is people who are afraid of anything new and different, if it isn't the way they believe that their parents did it, it is evil and dangerous.
Yeah, something is happening. People who used to die at young ages of "unknown" cause (or even from known causes that are now treatable) are now living long enough for medical science to discover what is wrong with them.
The few that they actually won were ones where it was proven the farmers knew their seeds were contaminated and kept growing them anyway.
Unless it was shown that the farmers intentionally planted their crops so that they would be cross pollinated, that was irrelevant. And the burden of proof should be pretty high for the "intentionally" part.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that you cannot design curriculum to teach critical thinking. It is something that someone must be able to do in order to teach it. Additionally, it is not something anyone can say, "If you see X, Y and Z being taught, critical thinking is being taught."
Personally, I think the best thing that can be done to address a problem like this is to encourage people to go to snopes.com whenever they see a story like this. Not because Snopes is the be-all and end-all of accuracy, but because if you read enough Snopes critiques of urban legends and internet hoaxes you begin to see a pattern that allows you to recognize the elements of stories that have been embroidered to make a point (whether they started out as a true story or were made up out of whole cloth).
Excuse me where did I say there should be no regulation?
Why is it on this board that whenever someone suggests that many of the problems in the U.S. and/or Europe are the result of excessive government regulation someone thinks it is insightful to say something along the lines of, "Oh yeah, well go live in Somalia if that is what you want." When in fact that was not what the person said they wanted.
Both North Korea and Somalia illustrate the same problem. The complete and utter absence of the rule of law. The fact of the matter is that once the number and scope of laws and government regulation exceed some point, the collapse of the rule of law is inevitable unless those laws and regulations are reduced. The U.S. and the EU are both well beyond that point. The Tea Party and the Occupy movement are both the result of people realizing that the rule of law is breaking down.
So, we put other morally bankrupt people in charge of what we can and can't buy? Yeah, I can see how that is a great idea. /s
Really? Your solution to the fact that people are selfish and greedy and more interested in lining their own pockets than in avoiding poisoning and killing their fellow man is to give some of them the power to decide who can and cannot be in business?
Clearly the housing market collapse and attendant stock market crash were a result of the big banks suffering from too much government oversight/regulation.
Or not.
Doh!
Well, as a matter of fact it was. The housing bubble was a result of the government pressuring banks to make loans to people with poor credit compounded by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (organizations created be federal legislation) bundling up high risk mortgages and selling them as government backed securities. I am simplifying the situation significantly, but without the involvement of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage derivatives would never have had sufficient trust in the market to take off the way they did. The problems with Fannie and Freddie were compounded by politicians, such as Chris Dodd and Barnie Frank (they are not the only ones, they are just the ones I remember because they were chosen by Congress in 2009-2010 to craft the legislation to "fix" the problem that caused the meltdown), who intervened to prevent any action being taken when several other politicians started to suspect there was a problem in 2003.
It may be a simple way to put it, but is "get the money out of politics" any more insightful of an actual course of action? My point was that if the government would stop regulating every aspect of our lives, corporations would face more competition from small businesses and would find less value in spending money on politicians than in some other use for that money. Government regulation always increases the disadvantage small companies (especially one or two person operations) have when it comes to competing with large companies, yet large companies are almost always the ones guilty of the action that causes people to call for government regulation. So, here is the pattern, large company does something unethical/dangerous, people call for government regulations on that industry, small companies face greater obstacles to compete with large company, large company makes even more money, rinse and repeat.
You know the best way to get the money out of politics? Get the politics out of money.
Ok, a couple of points. First, increasing government power/regulations increases corporate power because increased government regulations make it harder for small businesses to function. You complain about the lack of power for the individual and then call for governments more like those in Europe, which are less responsive to the people than that of the U.S.
The House passed a budget, the Senate never took it up. They never even considered it. All they did was vote down Obama's budget. When the Democrats controlled the House for two years with Obama as President, they never passed a budget.
The Democrat plan for years has been to pass some outrageous bill to increase the size of the federal government by huge amounts and then get the Republicans to "compromise" by only increasing the size and scope of the federal government by a little bit. The problem is that the Republicans' constituents want the size and scope of the government reduced. If you are happy with an ever larger, more powerful, more intrusive government, then support the Democrats. Personally, I think the government has long past the point of having too much interference in my day to day life.
So, why is Occupy on Wall Street and not on Capital Hill? The problem you are talking about is with the politicians, not the bankers. Were you a supporter of the Tea Party? Because they were complaining about what you are saying is why you consider Occupy to represent you and they had a plan as to what to do about it.
Right, because, after all, the fact that Obama wants to spend trillions of dollars every year (based on the budget he submitted earlier this year, which is the only budget proposed by a Democrat in the last three years) that we don't have is behaving ethically? Or the fact that the Democrats in the Senate refuse to pass a budget at all because it would reveal their spending priorities to the American people, even though they are legally bound to do so, is ethical?
Where do you get that "most people" get paid biweekly from the Obama's "$40 out of your weekly paycheck"?
So basically Obama, when he says "$40 in your weekly paycheck" is targeting those who make over $104,000 a year ($40 is 2 percent of $2000 and $2000 times 52 is $104,000), and you say he is not targeting the rich?
You mean that passing a year long extension rather than a two month extension is what you call opposing a tax cut?
you will have to make it up later one way or another--either through reduced SS benefits or increased SS taxes to make up for the deficit.
Nah, they are going to make it up by making our children(or at this point, more likely our grandchildren, they have already spent all the money our children are going to earn) pay more in SS taxes.
What do you base this idea that "paychecks are normally bi-weekly" on ? Over the course of my working life, I have been paid monthly, bi-weekly, weekly, and semi-monthly, but by far the majority of my employers paid me on a weekly basis.
If this cut means $40 in each weekly paycheck, you are doing pretty well for your self. It is only a 2% cut in the Social Security tax withholding. For the average U.S. household, that is less than $25 a week. So apparently, Obama is targeting this tax cut to the rich, since his target demographic will get $40 a week from it? The other great part of this is that the House was getting beat up for not passing this two month extension, when they had passed a one year extension.
Of course, what I love is that the people pushing this are the people who cry about "ending social security as we know it" every time someone proposes a plan to make social security more likely to be long term sustainable.
Really? What about the Occupy movement represents you? Borrowing lots of money to get a degree in puppetry? Getting upset when those truly on the economic bottom of the ladder (the homeless) show up and try to share in the food donated to the protest?
Logic goes that if anyone is allowed conceal carry,...
No, the logic goes that people who are planning to shoot up a bunch of people are not going to be deterred by the fact that some place is a "gun-free" zone. As a matter of fact, that makes that place a better choice for shooting up a bunch of people because you know that no one else there will be armed. The argument is that these places should allow those who have been granted a concealed carry permit (a process that usually involves some evaluation of the mental state of the individual and whether or not they have a history of encounters with law enforcement) because then not everybody there would be solely a potential victim.
Of course, the big part of this argument comes from the stories very few people hear of where someone tried to shoot up a place where there were people carrying concealed weapons. Within six months of the first Virginia Tech shootings there were two or three similar attempts that did not make the news because the shooter only got off about six shots before someone with a concealed carry license pulled their weapon and shot him. The thing is, every time someone tries this in a "gun-free" zone, there are a lot of deaths, every time someone tries this where someone is legally concealed carrying there are at most three deaths (two victims and the perpetrator).
Except that I remember that there was not that much outcry from the general populace to "do something". There was a lot of "how did this happen?" The big outcry for security theater was from politicians. It would not have been very hard to sell the American people on the idea that the anti-terror measures that work were enough. Most people recognize, or can be easily shown, that the terrorists 9/11 plan would not work today. Any attempt to hijack an airplane today with weapons that only kill one at a time, and that not very efficiently (box cutters, the weapon of the 9/11 hijackers, are not very efficient weapons), would be met by all of the remaining passengers swamping the would be hijacker.
The few that they actually won were ones where it was proven the farmers knew their seeds were contaminated and kept growing them anyway.
What group is that? I know the Occupy movement claims to represent the 99%, but I do not personally know anybody who considers the Occupy movement to represent them (but then everybody I know actually works for a living).
There are two primary reasons. The first is the people who are afraid that GM crops (along with other technological breakthroughs) will destroy their arguments as to why the majority of people should allow faceless bureaucrats to decide how they can live their lives. The second is people who are afraid of anything new and different, if it isn't the way they believe that their parents did it, it is evil and dangerous.
Yeah, something is happening. People who used to die at young ages of "unknown" cause (or even from known causes that are now treatable) are now living long enough for medical science to discover what is wrong with them.
The few that they actually won were ones where it was proven the farmers knew their seeds were contaminated and kept growing them anyway.
Unless it was shown that the farmers intentionally planted their crops so that they would be cross pollinated, that was irrelevant. And the burden of proof should be pretty high for the "intentionally" part.
Actually, I have a simple answer. Require food to be labeled if any of the ingredients are under patent (whether GM or otherwise).
gmo is still not safe beyond a doubt
Nothing is safe beyond a doubt.
and less safe than plain ole food grown in clean soil.
Please provide some evidence for this statement and define "clean soil".