They're little more than prisons that let their inmates go home at 3pm./
My high school had no windows. We had a guard at the door who wouldn't let us in or out without three or four signed pieces of paper and an ID. Even after 3pm.
In the library there was one computer that ran Linux, in the middle of Windows-land. Unfortunately, I knew more about it than the IT guy. Maybe installing more Linux boxes or at least Open Office would have helped keep down licensing costs, but the teachers/students were not at all ready for change.
Actually, he's 15. In my mind, there's a big difference between jumping to conclusions about a 12-yr-old and jumping to conclusions about a 15-yr-old. Not that either one is in any way good, but you're statistically more likely to be right when assuming the worst about the older one. Unless there are some really crazy 12-yr-old bombers I don't know about. In any case, this is the logical conclusion to the spate of "zero tolerance" policies - circumstances mean nothing, the point becomes to inflict pain, to make examples of supposed "offenders," instead of to investigate and promote justice.
Frankly, all this says is that humans have undergone less natural selection than chimps have. Humans are the younger, more derived species. We already knew that. Chimps are better adapted for the environment they've lived in for at least the last six-seven billion years than we are for the myriad of environments we've lived in for the last hundred thousand? Who'd've thunk it. I don't think it matters whether or not we adapt our environment to us - see Homo Florensiensis, who underwent dwarfing even though they appeared to have relatively sophisticated tools and culture. Give it a while, and diabetes will kill off slow metabolisms, constant warfare will select for people more willing to compromise . . . well, a pacifist can dream, can't she?
When I was in second grade (in a public school in a relatively poor neighborhood), the teacher kept a series of six or seven extra assignments at the side of the room, mostly coloring, maybe some math or some spelling. If we finished the regular assignment, and all the extras, then we got to have free time, so there was an incentive to keep working. My view of the world was pretty egotistic at the time, so I don't know if the kids who couldn't finish regular assignments had to take them home to work on.
After the introduction of NCLB, teachers in grade school are already teaching to a test. That's a shame. Screw homework, because it's a much more valuable life skill to fill in the little bubbles on an answer sheet. The implication NCLB gives is that if a kid isn't doing well, it's always the teacher's fault. Teachers aren't lazy, stupid, or heartless, so let's give them some credit and let them do their jobs without threat of capital punishment.
So we're looking at 8 semesters English, 8 semesters math, 8 semesters science. Now there's also foreign languages, social science, history, fine arts, gym, and god forbid you screw up in one class because then you might not have room in your schedule to make it up. I'm all for raising academic standards -- lord knows we need it -- but let's be reasonable.
but I would have liked to see waveforms of a third performer playing the same piece, just to see what the natural range of variation in classical music is.
Problem: OSX can't figure out what's inside a file without looking at its extension, so it can't tell the difference between Vorbis and Theora. Quicktime will read both Vorbis and Theora, but only with the proper plugins installed. Elsewise, support for these codecs is still pretty slim in the Mac world.
I don't see any difference in the end products here. I'm not going to Citizendium in a paper any more than I'm going to cite Wikipedia, or Brittanica. Primary sources, or reliable secondary sources, are what my profs look for. I use Wikipedia all the time, if I want to know what phylum ducks belong to or where in the hell Djibouti is. In that sense, I don't see where official edits help; to me, that only means that as soon as I see a grammatical error, I can't fix it. Not to mention that starting up a new project takes a lot of time and personpower, and until then, Wikipedia will remain far more comprehensive.
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They're little more than prisons that let their inmates go home at 3pm./ My high school had no windows. We had a guard at the door who wouldn't let us in or out without three or four signed pieces of paper and an ID. Even after 3pm. In the library there was one computer that ran Linux, in the middle of Windows-land. Unfortunately, I knew more about it than the IT guy. Maybe installing more Linux boxes or at least Open Office would have helped keep down licensing costs, but the teachers/students were not at all ready for change.
Whoops. Million, billion. It's all the same.
No.
Actually, he's 15. In my mind, there's a big difference between jumping to conclusions about a 12-yr-old and jumping to conclusions about a 15-yr-old. Not that either one is in any way good, but you're statistically more likely to be right when assuming the worst about the older one. Unless there are some really crazy 12-yr-old bombers I don't know about. In any case, this is the logical conclusion to the spate of "zero tolerance" policies - circumstances mean nothing, the point becomes to inflict pain, to make examples of supposed "offenders," instead of to investigate and promote justice.
Frankly, all this says is that humans have undergone less natural selection than chimps have. Humans are the younger, more derived species. We already knew that. Chimps are better adapted for the environment they've lived in for at least the last six-seven billion years than we are for the myriad of environments we've lived in for the last hundred thousand? Who'd've thunk it. I don't think it matters whether or not we adapt our environment to us - see Homo Florensiensis, who underwent dwarfing even though they appeared to have relatively sophisticated tools and culture. Give it a while, and diabetes will kill off slow metabolisms, constant warfare will select for people more willing to compromise . . . well, a pacifist can dream, can't she?
Oh, good. I'm not the only one who noticed that.
When I was in second grade (in a public school in a relatively poor neighborhood), the teacher kept a series of six or seven extra assignments at the side of the room, mostly coloring, maybe some math or some spelling. If we finished the regular assignment, and all the extras, then we got to have free time, so there was an incentive to keep working. My view of the world was pretty egotistic at the time, so I don't know if the kids who couldn't finish regular assignments had to take them home to work on. After the introduction of NCLB, teachers in grade school are already teaching to a test. That's a shame. Screw homework, because it's a much more valuable life skill to fill in the little bubbles on an answer sheet. The implication NCLB gives is that if a kid isn't doing well, it's always the teacher's fault. Teachers aren't lazy, stupid, or heartless, so let's give them some credit and let them do their jobs without threat of capital punishment.
So we're looking at 8 semesters English, 8 semesters math, 8 semesters science. Now there's also foreign languages, social science, history, fine arts, gym, and god forbid you screw up in one class because then you might not have room in your schedule to make it up. I'm all for raising academic standards -- lord knows we need it -- but let's be reasonable.
but I would have liked to see waveforms of a third performer playing the same piece, just to see what the natural range of variation in classical music is.
Problem: OSX can't figure out what's inside a file without looking at its extension, so it can't tell the difference between Vorbis and Theora. Quicktime will read both Vorbis and Theora, but only with the proper plugins installed. Elsewise, support for these codecs is still pretty slim in the Mac world.
I don't see any difference in the end products here. I'm not going to Citizendium in a paper any more than I'm going to cite Wikipedia, or Brittanica. Primary sources, or reliable secondary sources, are what my profs look for. I use Wikipedia all the time, if I want to know what phylum ducks belong to or where in the hell Djibouti is. In that sense, I don't see where official edits help; to me, that only means that as soon as I see a grammatical error, I can't fix it. Not to mention that starting up a new project takes a lot of time and personpower, and until then, Wikipedia will remain far more comprehensive.