Otherwise, it's not anyone else's fault but your own. They're raking in the profits and government subsidies, but don't want to build the necessary infrastructure to increase network capacity. Instead, they'd just rather buy out T-Mobile, because that instantly gives them a bigger customer base to milk.
What these telecom companies have been doing has been nothing short of criminal. Capitalism at work. Having to choose between what little competition there is, amounts to having no real choice at all.
Some math exams are quite difficult as they are without calculators, such as the William Lowell Putnam competition, or even any of the American Mathematics Competitions (AMC, including AIME and USAMO). The existence of these exams proves the fact that, unless the purpose of an examination is to test one's ability to use such computational devices, there is no intrinsic reason why calculators should ever be REQUIRED for an exam.
The truth is, it takes work on the part of the test designer (often, the instructor) to write questions that are intended to test concepts in a way that do not require a computational aid. And educational publishers collude with the manufacturers of calculators to provide teaching materials that assume the possession and use of said calculators. So teachers, faced with the choice of a pre-approved, ready-made curriculum, versus having to design their own exams and fight for approval by bureaucratic school boards--assuming they even have the intellectual capacity to write their own material--choose the former. It is, again, the political and economic influence of large, powerful corporations dictating how math is taught, that is the reason why we push this crappy, overpriced technology on kids.
Now, that's not to say calculators don't have their uses. They absolutely do, but if the pedagogical goal is to show students how to use technology, then examinations must be written in a way that leverages, rather than inhibits, its use. Otherwise, it is entirely possible to construct exams in a way that require nothing except a pencil, paper, and a brain.
Do you have to have a degree in the analytical sciences? Does that automatically make you a scientist? Or do you need to be employed in a relevant scientific field? What does it really mean to be "doing science?" Who gets to decide, anyway?
This kind of navel-gazing and picking at terminology is not really very useful or even descriptive. I think it's far more useful to look at one's conduct and the results thereof, rather than one's appellation or pedigree, when trying to make an evaluation of the meaning of that person's work.
I'm sorry, but anyone who lives in LA knows that Newport Beach is not exactly "poor" or "cash-strapped" by any stretch of the imagination. It's a VERY affluent city, although being in the traditionally Republican stronghold of Orange County, maybe the taxpayers aren't willing to look under their suede leather sofa cushions to fund basic public services. This smells more like a scheme to do something trendy, rather than some sincere attempt to reduce spending.
I had my data plan abruptly terminated for a month because AT&T figured out that I chopped up my SIM into a micro-SIM to fit in my iPad. Never mind the fact that I could only use one device at a time. They wanted me to pay the extra $25/month for a data plan on the iPad. It wasn't even high usage--I basically did it to browse the occasional website and use Google Maps.
And on top of that, I was billed the entire amount for the data plan during the month that it was cut off--in effect, AT&T charged me for a service it deliberately refused to deliver.
Fully agreed. I don't have Bump, even though I have an iPhone. It's a critical mass issue--I'm not going to install something that only a fraction of a fraction of other individuals use. The only convenient thing about it is that I don't have to manually enter the information at some point, which is what I would need to do with a physical card.
The beauty of a physical card is that it *always* works. As long as you keep it up-to-date, it will never fail on you. It's also an expression of the personality of the individual or the company he/she represents. By deferring the work of transcribing that information onto a communication device, you facilitate the transfer of that information at the moment of interaction, which is far more important.
So by your definition, the Catholic Church is a cult, since orders to resist investigations and indictments of pedophile priests were issued by the Holy See itself--all confidential, of course. The Vatican considers its priesthood subject to its own jurisdiction, and not the state(s) in which they operate. The ends justify the means, indeed--for the Church to this day continues to believe that by not taking action to stop child rape by its clergy, it is still able to claim that it remains a force for good in the greater sense.
Throughout history, many organized religions have sanctioned the commission of serious crimes and unethical acts by its members in the name of the greater good. Whether it is the Crusades, the Inquisition, World War II, or the Taleban, it is all the same--religious, dogmatic thinking is a disease of the mind, an affliction that has caused far more human suffering throughout history than it has alleviated. If that isn't the epitome of cult behavior, nothing is.
I should say that the most dangerous idea known to man is not "the ends justifies any means," but rather, "God made the world this way, and it is useless to question why." For the latter is invoked to explain the former--once you are told to not question the world around you in a rational, scientific manner, then anything can be justified.
First, I noted that in the article, Google claims to try to keep the "money" side separate from the "search" side. Okay, but the fact remains that if you don't crack down on cheating, then companies will have less incentive to buy paid links from Google. The fact that the quality of the results would decrease for the user is secondary. So Google surely is motivated to prevent companies from gaming the system, not out of some altruistic sense of honesty or service to the user, but because cheating threatens their paid advertising model.
The other observation is that SEO tactics could easily be used as a weapon against competitors. If you're a top-listed company and your competitors want to knock you down...all they have to do is put up spam links to your site, then report it to Google. Next thing you know, you've been de-listed.
The fact that you are even asking those questions is an indication that you are ignorant of the overwhelming abundance of relevant scientific research in both of those fields (evolutionary biology, and climatology, respectively). Since you are ignorant, you forfeit your credibility to ask those questions in a rhetorical manner, since you are obviously attempting to prove your point by making it appear as if those fields do not have testable hypotheses. They do. You are just too blind to have bothered to learn about them.
...why China is outperforming the US in education?
I'm thoroughly fed up with the hypocritical, narrow-minded, ignorant attitudes of American society, especially with respect to religion. We have a President who, in his State of the Union address, talks about the need to do a better job at innovation and education, and here we are, wasting time, money, and effort teaching religious doctrine in science classes in public schools! Meanwhile, the Bible-thumpers are lamenting that their jobs are being outsourced to China and India. Maybe you would have a job that didn't involve greeting people at Wal-Mart if you actually learned something besides how Jesus died for your sins, dumbshits. Maybe you wouldn't have had to default on your subprime loan if you had learned how to think critically when you were in school, instead of obsessing over the opiate that is American pop culture.
It never ceases to amaze me how incredibly, overwhelmingly, willfully stupid some people are. You would think these religious freaks would be able to connect the dots, but evangelism has never been about getting people to think for themselves--quite the opposite, in fact.
Ah, because they want to emphasize the fact that the "sum" of the figures in a given row, column, or diagonal is a 3x3x3 cube, and thus the total number of cubic units is three times the sum of a single row/column, or 3 x 3^3, which in turn is the sum of the nine consecutive odd integers from 1 to 17, which form the individual entries of the geomagical square.
By 3.3^3, they mean 3 x 3^3, not (3.3)^3. It's an unfortunate use of the period symbol to denote multiplication because standard keyboards do not have the centered dot symbol.
He's not getting rid of phones for ALL state employees. Just the ones that clearly don't need them. It's funny how this is being criticized...everyone has a personal phone. If it's REALLY important, they can still stay in touch. It's also false to bring out the claim that landlines are more expensive, because if you are a state employee with a desk and you sit behind it most of the time, you already have a landline, and it's not going away.
You know, as hard as it may be to believe this, there REALLY was a time when mobile phones did not exist. And the government did not collapse for want of them. There really was a time when people weren't able to get in touch with each other 24/7. Society did not collapse for lack of Twitter, Facebook, SMS, and email everywhere you go. And it's not like taking state-owned mobile phones away is going to kill these employees or put undue burden on them. They still have their personal phones they can use if it's necessary to do so.
Agreed. Precognition might be characterized as a form of extrasensory perception, but not all manifestations of the latter could be classified as the former.
For example, precognition refers to being able to sense something that has not yet happened, but ESP might be used to describe the ability to sense a past event not experienced by the individual sensing it, such as "reading" someone's memories.
I will answer your question with a question: why are our elected officials using scare tactics to induce us to relinquish our civil rights, by speaking about securing our safety in the name of the "war on terror?"
Corporate greed is the reason why the United States sells armaments and sets up puppet governments in foreign countries. Corporate power is the reason why the US permits dictatorial regimes to continue oppressing their people. When those people or states rebel, the result is terrorism.
So, what does corporate power have to do with warrantless search and seizure? Simple. The more power and control the government has, the more power and control the corporations they serve have. The politicians certainly aren't doing this out of kindness for the people.
You might cut off a few of the Hydra's heads, but more will simply grow in their place. You're looking at the politicians as the source of the problem, when the real problem is systemic. It's the structure of government, and in particular, its relationship to corporate powers, that causes the erosion of civil liberties, not the individual actors themselves--who are merely doing what is in their own best interest. Armed revolution may bring down the actors, but failing to address the flaws in the system will bring no lasting improvement.
Again, the real problem here is that corporations have become so powerful that politicians are no longer accountable to the people they govern. Instead, the system is twisted and abused to the effect of enrichment of the already wealthy elite at the expense of everyone else. This is how the Republicans can say with a straight face, "we want to cut government spending" while giving tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires. This is how the Democrats can pass health care legislation that mandates payment of premiums to private insurers, without guaranteeing that the rates will actually decrease. It is all about MONEY. Civil liberties? You lost those a long time ago when corporations decided the easiest way to make money was to manipulate the government into doing their dirty work for them.
Imagine...how did students ever *possibly* manage to actually learn anything before laptops were invented? Oh yeah, that's right, they used pen and paper and did this revolutionary thing called "taking notes." It's a disgrace how spoiled today's students are, that they somehow feel *entitled* to laptop access in the classroom, or that they think it's somehow necessary for their studies. I think that is indicative of the lack of writing skills, penmanship, critical thinking, and attention span that plagues younger generations raised on the conveniences of computer technology.
That's not to say computers aren't useful or necessary in certain applications. I used computers all the time in college, but honestly, is it really THAT HARD to sit in a classroom for three hours and pay attention? That should be as much an essential part of your educational training as learning the subject material itself.
If I were a professor, I would ban mobile phones, laptops, and recording devices. ("What?! No phone? How can you restrict that--what if I get an emergency call/text?" Um. Believe it or not, there once was a time when not everyone had a phone surgically grafted to their hand.) My students would have a scientific calculator, pen/pencil and a notepad, and they would be expected to sit, listen, and for once, use their brains. We're talking about college here--if you want to be treated as an adult, it might be a good idea to actually demonstrate that you can act like one. Yes, there's something to be said for giving you the responsibility of being the judge of your own actions, but that leeway stops when your incessant texting, twitter, and facebook updates start affecting others who do actually want to learn.
You may want to look at the history of the telecommunications industry up to the breakup of "Ma Bell" in 1984. Time and time again, we have seen that corporations cannot be entrusted to put the public's interest foremost, and monopolies have occurred in a variety of American industries. You SAY you don't need government regulation on what TV you choose to watch, or what food you wish to eat, but in fact, if you did not have any regulations, you would most certainly be in a much worse position. Totally "free-market" approaches DO NOT WORK. History has proven this so many times that all you have to do is EDUCATE YOURSELF by opening a textbook.
I don't want the government to decide what I want to eat or watch or read, either. Nobody does. I loathe bureaucracy and government waste. On the other hand, the abuses of corporate power already have an impact on how much I pay for certain goods and services, and the very range of choices I have in those products I want to buy. The problem with your notion of regulation as a last resort is that you fail to distinguish effective regulation versus ineffective regulation--you just lump them together as if ANY regulation must be intrinsically harmful. By the time you want something done to fix the problem, it's already too late. It's typical right-wing thinking that you alone can go up against massive corporations who are far more well-funded than you are and win. It's also something of a mantra among conservatives that a totally free market is the optimal economic approach. Look at what the investment banks did with your money due to the lack of regulatory control just in the past few years.
And if you didn't have an entity that had the power to enforce laws restricting what you could not eat, you would have been poisoned by now. The USDA and FDA--in theory, at least--provide necessary consumer protections so that you know what is in your food. Dairy producers can't put melamine in their milk to simulate higher protein content, because that would cause kidney failure in the long run. Without a law to prevent that, good luck trying to figure out which brand of milk to buy before millions of people nationwide start dying. It's also those same regulations that allow us to seek legal recourse when, say, your kid dies from eating a hamburger tainted with E. coli O157:H7. Are you really sure you want the government to keep out of your business of what you want to eat? Then you're going to need a biochemical laboratory with a full range of analytical equipment to test all your food, and know how to use it, if you want to not get sick, or we'll all have to revert to an agrarian lifestyle and grow our own food.
You've completely misunderstood my post. You seem to be under the impression that what I variously call the "structure" and "foundation" refers to what you call "number crunching," or rote computation. This cannot be further from the truth. My story began with arithmetic because that's where everybody's math education begins. What that story is about is not computation per se, but the development beyond proficiency and toward mastery, regardless of the particular mathematical concept being taught. The lesson I took from my early experiences was that (1) I must persist in pursuing mastery of the subject in order to proceed further; and (2) the process is all the more rewarding because it is frustrating.
The overriding problem I see in mathematics education is that students are permitted to progress onward with more sophisticated concepts without demonstrating mastery of prerequisites. Math is not intrinsically hard--it *becomes* hard when the prerequisites are not sufficiently well understood. This is true whether we are speaking of arithmetic as a prerequisite for elementary algebra, or abstract algebra as a prerequisite for algebraic topology.
You see, what others may call mathematical intuition and insight, I call experience and practice. Exceedingly rare are the true prodigies (Euler, Gauss, Galois, Ramanujan, etc.)--the overwhelming majority of the mathematically proficient across all disciplines excel at what they do because they have amassed a sizable body of experience with the math of both past and present. They don't necessarily recall every bit of it from memory, but they can recognize and synthesize new lines of thought from old ones. To an outside observer, it appears as if they are drawing inspiration from some mysterious inner insight. But to other mathematicians, this is merely how one has become trained to think. And such thinking is not possible without that foundation I speak of.
Really. Must we contextualize mathematics, or try to talk about what it is or is not? Do we really need to point to a particular cognitive framework as "the reason" why math is not taught "properly?"
To use a slightly loathsome phrase, math "is what it is." Instead of talking about how people should relate to it, I suggest a radical approach: just LEARN it. Teach it for what it is.
I struggled with arithmetic when I was in grade school, not because I didn't understand the rules, but because I kept making mistakes. And my teachers had the wisdom to know that those errors had to be drilled out of me before I could proceed any further. I suffered. I *hated* the tedium. We were asked to multiply two twelve-digit numbers with no assistance from any computing devices or tables; divide four-digit numbers into twenty-digit numbers, until we could do it with 100% accuracy every time. It didn't have to be lightning fast. It just had to be CORRECT.
And when I mastered that skill, it felt fantastic. We moved on to more advanced topics, and each time the teacher made sure we had firmly laid down the next conceptual brick of this vast mathematical edifice we were building for ourselves. It was hard but rewarding. To those critics who might say such an approach would discourage some students, and that some kids just need to be excited by what they learn, clearly you have never really understood what it means to build that foundation. It's got to be ROCK SOLID. No crap about trying to make math "fun" or "interesting" or "relevant." That sort of stuff comes when it comes; they are merely ornaments on the pillars. There's no point in making the structure pretty before you make it sturdy.
So then, how do you get students motivated? It's really quite simple. You challenge them and you force them to bust their asses, and when all their hard work pays off, that sense of accomplishment is better than any drug. To know that you did it on your own, and you have complete confidence in your mastery of the concept, is precisely what must drive them forward. You can't entice them with anything else. You can't try to swaddle the math in some cutesy real-world application, because that is going to be fake, and they know it.
That's the story of how I graduated with my BS in mathematics from one of the most prestigious scientific universities in the world. It was purely the early appreciation for persistence toward understanding mathematics for its own sake. I'm not saying everyone has to keep math "pure." If your goal is to apply it in some other discipline, go for it. But the learning process has to build upon that foundation of math for math's sake.
Seems to me that spelling is a proper subset of writing, yes? And therefore, proficiency in writing necessarily entails proficiency in spelling.
I think attention to correct spelling, grammar, and usage has largely fallen by the wayside because there it has become popular to criticize such attention to detail as being fussy or anal-retentive. People who point out these errors are derided for being pedantic, petty, and nitpicking. After all, if the meaning or intent is clear, why get hung up on the details? Perhaps this is a legitimate position in colloquial language, but in a literary and academic context, proficiency in such "minutiae" is a demonstration that one is adequately educated. Therefore, it is unacceptable to allow students to rely on spell-checkers (they aren't foolproof, in any case). The analogy between spell-checking software and a calculator is flawed, because a calculator can facilitate the teaching of more advanced mathematical concepts by making short work of tedious arithmetic, whereas a spell-checker only points out errors that the writer has already made. That is to say, a modern mathematician or engineer is not going to calculate trigonometric functions by hand. A modern writer, however, should be sufficiently educated in spelling and grammar to not need to rely on a spell-checker to write well. The rare or occasional check or proofreading is appropriate and expected, but there is no outright reliance on automated spell-checking. And for a student who is learning how to write well, a necessary part of that process is to learn from one's mistakes. As is the case with arithmetic, accuracy improves most quickly when the safety net is removed.
I don't know what kind of academic curriculum a student could choose these days that would permit them to pursue a career in medical research without ever having learned basic calculus at SOME point. I mean, when I was in high school, having taken AP Calculus AB was more or less a requirement for applying to almost any reasonably competitive four-year university. How do you enter a pre-med program without even knowing what an integral or derivative is? It seems completely implausible to me, given how competitive these programs have become. Moreover, that this author somehow thought it novel to estimate the area under a curve via trapezoidal approximation is not nearly as bewildering as the fact that they should have had the basic research skills to find that their "discovery" amounted to something that is regularly taught to high school kids. To me, that's the real scandal--that someone who can write a journal article doesn't know or care to look for prior research.
What *is* intelligence? We have a difficult enough time quantifying it for humans, in all its various nuances and dimensions. Then, how does that apply to animal intelligence, when the issue of interspecies communication looms large? How do we know if a creature is intelligent if the failing is ours for not fully understanding how it communicates?
Is a chimpanzee intelligent? An African gray parrot? An octopus? An elephant? A pig? A dolphin? A dog? A cat? How can you rank the intelligence of these very different animals when they each have radically different ways of relating to the world, and therefore, to us?
The real premise that the article raises is not that dogs are more intelligent than cats, but that the degree of sociability can serve as a proxy indicator for intelligence. The logical position on this hypothesis is that it is probably reasonable, but considered in isolation of other known measures of human intelligence, it is also unlikely to be sufficient.
The anthropocentric view of intelligence is that something or someone is "intelligent" if we can understand it, or relate to it. This is a similar claim to the one put forth in the article. Because dogs do exhibit social characteristics that humans can relate to and work with, they are "more intelligent." But as I've pointed out, this isn't necessarily a complete characterization of the nature of intelligence, as for example, hypothetical alien beings from another planet might possess the technology to visit us, yet if we could not understand them or relate to them, we would consider them stupid under such a criterion.
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Otherwise, it's not anyone else's fault but your own. They're raking in the profits and government subsidies, but don't want to build the necessary infrastructure to increase network capacity. Instead, they'd just rather buy out T-Mobile, because that instantly gives them a bigger customer base to milk.
What these telecom companies have been doing has been nothing short of criminal. Capitalism at work. Having to choose between what little competition there is, amounts to having no real choice at all.
Some math exams are quite difficult as they are without calculators, such as the William Lowell Putnam competition, or even any of the American Mathematics Competitions (AMC, including AIME and USAMO). The existence of these exams proves the fact that, unless the purpose of an examination is to test one's ability to use such computational devices, there is no intrinsic reason why calculators should ever be REQUIRED for an exam.
The truth is, it takes work on the part of the test designer (often, the instructor) to write questions that are intended to test concepts in a way that do not require a computational aid. And educational publishers collude with the manufacturers of calculators to provide teaching materials that assume the possession and use of said calculators. So teachers, faced with the choice of a pre-approved, ready-made curriculum, versus having to design their own exams and fight for approval by bureaucratic school boards--assuming they even have the intellectual capacity to write their own material--choose the former. It is, again, the political and economic influence of large, powerful corporations dictating how math is taught, that is the reason why we push this crappy, overpriced technology on kids.
Now, that's not to say calculators don't have their uses. They absolutely do, but if the pedagogical goal is to show students how to use technology, then examinations must be written in a way that leverages, rather than inhibits, its use. Otherwise, it is entirely possible to construct exams in a way that require nothing except a pencil, paper, and a brain.
Do you have to have a degree in the analytical sciences? Does that automatically make you a scientist?
Or do you need to be employed in a relevant scientific field?
What does it really mean to be "doing science?"
Who gets to decide, anyway?
This kind of navel-gazing and picking at terminology is not really very useful or even descriptive. I think it's far more useful to look at one's conduct and the results thereof, rather than one's appellation or pedigree, when trying to make an evaluation of the meaning of that person's work.
I'm sorry, but anyone who lives in LA knows that Newport Beach is not exactly "poor" or "cash-strapped" by any stretch of the imagination. It's a VERY affluent city, although being in the traditionally Republican stronghold of Orange County, maybe the taxpayers aren't willing to look under their suede leather sofa cushions to fund basic public services. This smells more like a scheme to do something trendy, rather than some sincere attempt to reduce spending.
I had my data plan abruptly terminated for a month because AT&T figured out that I chopped up my SIM into a micro-SIM to fit in my iPad. Never mind the fact that I could only use one device at a time. They wanted me to pay the extra $25/month for a data plan on the iPad. It wasn't even high usage--I basically did it to browse the occasional website and use Google Maps.
And on top of that, I was billed the entire amount for the data plan during the month that it was cut off--in effect, AT&T charged me for a service it deliberately refused to deliver.
Fully agreed. I don't have Bump, even though I have an iPhone. It's a critical mass issue--I'm not going to install something that only a fraction of a fraction of other individuals use. The only convenient thing about it is that I don't have to manually enter the information at some point, which is what I would need to do with a physical card.
The beauty of a physical card is that it *always* works. As long as you keep it up-to-date, it will never fail on you. It's also an expression of the personality of the individual or the company he/she represents. By deferring the work of transcribing that information onto a communication device, you facilitate the transfer of that information at the moment of interaction, which is far more important.
So by your definition, the Catholic Church is a cult, since orders to resist investigations and indictments of pedophile priests were issued by the Holy See itself--all confidential, of course. The Vatican considers its priesthood subject to its own jurisdiction, and not the state(s) in which they operate. The ends justify the means, indeed--for the Church to this day continues to believe that by not taking action to stop child rape by its clergy, it is still able to claim that it remains a force for good in the greater sense.
Throughout history, many organized religions have sanctioned the commission of serious crimes and unethical acts by its members in the name of the greater good. Whether it is the Crusades, the Inquisition, World War II, or the Taleban, it is all the same--religious, dogmatic thinking is a disease of the mind, an affliction that has caused far more human suffering throughout history than it has alleviated. If that isn't the epitome of cult behavior, nothing is.
I should say that the most dangerous idea known to man is not "the ends justifies any means," but rather, "God made the world this way, and it is useless to question why." For the latter is invoked to explain the former--once you are told to not question the world around you in a rational, scientific manner, then anything can be justified.
First, I noted that in the article, Google claims to try to keep the "money" side separate from the "search" side. Okay, but the fact remains that if you don't crack down on cheating, then companies will have less incentive to buy paid links from Google. The fact that the quality of the results would decrease for the user is secondary. So Google surely is motivated to prevent companies from gaming the system, not out of some altruistic sense of honesty or service to the user, but because cheating threatens their paid advertising model.
The other observation is that SEO tactics could easily be used as a weapon against competitors. If you're a top-listed company and your competitors want to knock you down...all they have to do is put up spam links to your site, then report it to Google. Next thing you know, you've been de-listed.
The fact that you are even asking those questions is an indication that you are ignorant of the overwhelming abundance of relevant scientific research in both of those fields (evolutionary biology, and climatology, respectively). Since you are ignorant, you forfeit your credibility to ask those questions in a rhetorical manner, since you are obviously attempting to prove your point by making it appear as if those fields do not have testable hypotheses. They do. You are just too blind to have bothered to learn about them.
...why China is outperforming the US in education?
I'm thoroughly fed up with the hypocritical, narrow-minded, ignorant attitudes of American society, especially with respect to religion. We have a President who, in his State of the Union address, talks about the need to do a better job at innovation and education, and here we are, wasting time, money, and effort teaching religious doctrine in science classes in public schools! Meanwhile, the Bible-thumpers are lamenting that their jobs are being outsourced to China and India. Maybe you would have a job that didn't involve greeting people at Wal-Mart if you actually learned something besides how Jesus died for your sins, dumbshits. Maybe you wouldn't have had to default on your subprime loan if you had learned how to think critically when you were in school, instead of obsessing over the opiate that is American pop culture.
It never ceases to amaze me how incredibly, overwhelmingly, willfully stupid some people are. You would think these religious freaks would be able to connect the dots, but evangelism has never been about getting people to think for themselves--quite the opposite, in fact.
Ah, because they want to emphasize the fact that the "sum" of the figures in a given row, column, or diagonal is a 3x3x3 cube, and thus the total number of cubic units is three times the sum of a single row/column, or 3 x 3^3, which in turn is the sum of the nine consecutive odd integers from 1 to 17, which form the individual entries of the geomagical square.
By 3.3^3, they mean 3 x 3^3, not (3.3)^3. It's an unfortunate use of the period symbol to denote multiplication because standard keyboards do not have the centered dot symbol.
Check it out on page 5 of the New Scientist link. Apparently, they think 8 is an odd number, and 9 and 11 are not. So much for the "new math."
He's not getting rid of phones for ALL state employees. Just the ones that clearly don't need them. It's funny how this is being criticized...everyone has a personal phone. If it's REALLY important, they can still stay in touch. It's also false to bring out the claim that landlines are more expensive, because if you are a state employee with a desk and you sit behind it most of the time, you already have a landline, and it's not going away.
You know, as hard as it may be to believe this, there REALLY was a time when mobile phones did not exist. And the government did not collapse for want of them. There really was a time when people weren't able to get in touch with each other 24/7. Society did not collapse for lack of Twitter, Facebook, SMS, and email everywhere you go. And it's not like taking state-owned mobile phones away is going to kill these employees or put undue burden on them. They still have their personal phones they can use if it's necessary to do so.
Agreed. Precognition might be characterized as a form of extrasensory perception, but not all manifestations of the latter could be classified as the former.
For example, precognition refers to being able to sense something that has not yet happened, but ESP might be used to describe the ability to sense a past event not experienced by the individual sensing it, such as "reading" someone's memories.
I will answer your question with a question: why are our elected officials using scare tactics to induce us to relinquish our civil rights, by speaking about securing our safety in the name of the "war on terror?"
Corporate greed is the reason why the United States sells armaments and sets up puppet governments in foreign countries. Corporate power is the reason why the US permits dictatorial regimes to continue oppressing their people. When those people or states rebel, the result is terrorism.
So, what does corporate power have to do with warrantless search and seizure? Simple. The more power and control the government has, the more power and control the corporations they serve have. The politicians certainly aren't doing this out of kindness for the people.
You might cut off a few of the Hydra's heads, but more will simply grow in their place. You're looking at the politicians as the source of the problem, when the real problem is systemic. It's the structure of government, and in particular, its relationship to corporate powers, that causes the erosion of civil liberties, not the individual actors themselves--who are merely doing what is in their own best interest. Armed revolution may bring down the actors, but failing to address the flaws in the system will bring no lasting improvement.
Again, the real problem here is that corporations have become so powerful that politicians are no longer accountable to the people they govern. Instead, the system is twisted and abused to the effect of enrichment of the already wealthy elite at the expense of everyone else. This is how the Republicans can say with a straight face, "we want to cut government spending" while giving tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires. This is how the Democrats can pass health care legislation that mandates payment of premiums to private insurers, without guaranteeing that the rates will actually decrease. It is all about MONEY. Civil liberties? You lost those a long time ago when corporations decided the easiest way to make money was to manipulate the government into doing their dirty work for them.
Imagine...how did students ever *possibly* manage to actually learn anything before laptops were invented? Oh yeah, that's right, they used pen and paper and did this revolutionary thing called "taking notes." It's a disgrace how spoiled today's students are, that they somehow feel *entitled* to laptop access in the classroom, or that they think it's somehow necessary for their studies. I think that is indicative of the lack of writing skills, penmanship, critical thinking, and attention span that plagues younger generations raised on the conveniences of computer technology.
That's not to say computers aren't useful or necessary in certain applications. I used computers all the time in college, but honestly, is it really THAT HARD to sit in a classroom for three hours and pay attention? That should be as much an essential part of your educational training as learning the subject material itself.
If I were a professor, I would ban mobile phones, laptops, and recording devices. ("What?! No phone? How can you restrict that--what if I get an emergency call/text?" Um. Believe it or not, there once was a time when not everyone had a phone surgically grafted to their hand.) My students would have a scientific calculator, pen/pencil and a notepad, and they would be expected to sit, listen, and for once, use their brains. We're talking about college here--if you want to be treated as an adult, it might be a good idea to actually demonstrate that you can act like one. Yes, there's something to be said for giving you the responsibility of being the judge of your own actions, but that leeway stops when your incessant texting, twitter, and facebook updates start affecting others who do actually want to learn.
You may want to look at the history of the telecommunications industry up to the breakup of "Ma Bell" in 1984. Time and time again, we have seen that corporations cannot be entrusted to put the public's interest foremost, and monopolies have occurred in a variety of American industries. You SAY you don't need government regulation on what TV you choose to watch, or what food you wish to eat, but in fact, if you did not have any regulations, you would most certainly be in a much worse position. Totally "free-market" approaches DO NOT WORK. History has proven this so many times that all you have to do is EDUCATE YOURSELF by opening a textbook.
I don't want the government to decide what I want to eat or watch or read, either. Nobody does. I loathe bureaucracy and government waste. On the other hand, the abuses of corporate power already have an impact on how much I pay for certain goods and services, and the very range of choices I have in those products I want to buy. The problem with your notion of regulation as a last resort is that you fail to distinguish effective regulation versus ineffective regulation--you just lump them together as if ANY regulation must be intrinsically harmful. By the time you want something done to fix the problem, it's already too late. It's typical right-wing thinking that you alone can go up against massive corporations who are far more well-funded than you are and win. It's also something of a mantra among conservatives that a totally free market is the optimal economic approach. Look at what the investment banks did with your money due to the lack of regulatory control just in the past few years.
And if you didn't have an entity that had the power to enforce laws restricting what you could not eat, you would have been poisoned by now. The USDA and FDA--in theory, at least--provide necessary consumer protections so that you know what is in your food. Dairy producers can't put melamine in their milk to simulate higher protein content, because that would cause kidney failure in the long run. Without a law to prevent that, good luck trying to figure out which brand of milk to buy before millions of people nationwide start dying. It's also those same regulations that allow us to seek legal recourse when, say, your kid dies from eating a hamburger tainted with E. coli O157:H7. Are you really sure you want the government to keep out of your business of what you want to eat? Then you're going to need a biochemical laboratory with a full range of analytical equipment to test all your food, and know how to use it, if you want to not get sick, or we'll all have to revert to an agrarian lifestyle and grow our own food.
You've completely misunderstood my post. You seem to be under the impression that what I variously call the "structure" and "foundation" refers to what you call "number crunching," or rote computation. This cannot be further from the truth. My story began with arithmetic because that's where everybody's math education begins. What that story is about is not computation per se, but the development beyond proficiency and toward mastery, regardless of the particular mathematical concept being taught. The lesson I took from my early experiences was that (1) I must persist in pursuing mastery of the subject in order to proceed further; and (2) the process is all the more rewarding because it is frustrating.
The overriding problem I see in mathematics education is that students are permitted to progress onward with more sophisticated concepts without demonstrating mastery of prerequisites. Math is not intrinsically hard--it *becomes* hard when the prerequisites are not sufficiently well understood. This is true whether we are speaking of arithmetic as a prerequisite for elementary algebra, or abstract algebra as a prerequisite for algebraic topology.
You see, what others may call mathematical intuition and insight, I call experience and practice. Exceedingly rare are the true prodigies (Euler, Gauss, Galois, Ramanujan, etc.)--the overwhelming majority of the mathematically proficient across all disciplines excel at what they do because they have amassed a sizable body of experience with the math of both past and present. They don't necessarily recall every bit of it from memory, but they can recognize and synthesize new lines of thought from old ones. To an outside observer, it appears as if they are drawing inspiration from some mysterious inner insight. But to other mathematicians, this is merely how one has become trained to think. And such thinking is not possible without that foundation I speak of.
Really. Must we contextualize mathematics, or try to talk about what it is or is not? Do we really need to point to a particular cognitive framework as "the reason" why math is not taught "properly?"
To use a slightly loathsome phrase, math "is what it is." Instead of talking about how people should relate to it, I suggest a radical approach: just LEARN it. Teach it for what it is.
I struggled with arithmetic when I was in grade school, not because I didn't understand the rules, but because I kept making mistakes. And my teachers had the wisdom to know that those errors had to be drilled out of me before I could proceed any further. I suffered. I *hated* the tedium. We were asked to multiply two twelve-digit numbers with no assistance from any computing devices or tables; divide four-digit numbers into twenty-digit numbers, until we could do it with 100% accuracy every time. It didn't have to be lightning fast. It just had to be CORRECT.
And when I mastered that skill, it felt fantastic. We moved on to more advanced topics, and each time the teacher made sure we had firmly laid down the next conceptual brick of this vast mathematical edifice we were building for ourselves. It was hard but rewarding. To those critics who might say such an approach would discourage some students, and that some kids just need to be excited by what they learn, clearly you have never really understood what it means to build that foundation. It's got to be ROCK SOLID. No crap about trying to make math "fun" or "interesting" or "relevant." That sort of stuff comes when it comes; they are merely ornaments on the pillars. There's no point in making the structure pretty before you make it sturdy.
So then, how do you get students motivated? It's really quite simple. You challenge them and you force them to bust their asses, and when all their hard work pays off, that sense of accomplishment is better than any drug. To know that you did it on your own, and you have complete confidence in your mastery of the concept, is precisely what must drive them forward. You can't entice them with anything else. You can't try to swaddle the math in some cutesy real-world application, because that is going to be fake, and they know it.
That's the story of how I graduated with my BS in mathematics from one of the most prestigious scientific universities in the world. It was purely the early appreciation for persistence toward understanding mathematics for its own sake. I'm not saying everyone has to keep math "pure." If your goal is to apply it in some other discipline, go for it. But the learning process has to build upon that foundation of math for math's sake.
Seems to me that spelling is a proper subset of writing, yes? And therefore, proficiency in writing necessarily entails proficiency in spelling.
I think attention to correct spelling, grammar, and usage has largely fallen by the wayside because there it has become popular to criticize such attention to detail as being fussy or anal-retentive. People who point out these errors are derided for being pedantic, petty, and nitpicking. After all, if the meaning or intent is clear, why get hung up on the details? Perhaps this is a legitimate position in colloquial language, but in a literary and academic context, proficiency in such "minutiae" is a demonstration that one is adequately educated. Therefore, it is unacceptable to allow students to rely on spell-checkers (they aren't foolproof, in any case). The analogy between spell-checking software and a calculator is flawed, because a calculator can facilitate the teaching of more advanced mathematical concepts by making short work of tedious arithmetic, whereas a spell-checker only points out errors that the writer has already made. That is to say, a modern mathematician or engineer is not going to calculate trigonometric functions by hand. A modern writer, however, should be sufficiently educated in spelling and grammar to not need to rely on a spell-checker to write well. The rare or occasional check or proofreading is appropriate and expected, but there is no outright reliance on automated spell-checking. And for a student who is learning how to write well, a necessary part of that process is to learn from one's mistakes. As is the case with arithmetic, accuracy improves most quickly when the safety net is removed.
Clippy: "I see you're trying to enrich some uranium. Would you like some help with that?"
Iranian nuclear technician: "*#@&$* Clippy must DIE"
I don't know what kind of academic curriculum a student could choose these days that would permit them to pursue a career in medical research without ever having learned basic calculus at SOME point. I mean, when I was in high school, having taken AP Calculus AB was more or less a requirement for applying to almost any reasonably competitive four-year university. How do you enter a pre-med program without even knowing what an integral or derivative is? It seems completely implausible to me, given how competitive these programs have become. Moreover, that this author somehow thought it novel to estimate the area under a curve via trapezoidal approximation is not nearly as bewildering as the fact that they should have had the basic research skills to find that their "discovery" amounted to something that is regularly taught to high school kids. To me, that's the real scandal--that someone who can write a journal article doesn't know or care to look for prior research.
What *is* intelligence? We have a difficult enough time quantifying it for humans, in all its various nuances and dimensions. Then, how does that apply to animal intelligence, when the issue of interspecies communication looms large? How do we know if a creature is intelligent if the failing is ours for not fully understanding how it communicates?
Is a chimpanzee intelligent? An African gray parrot? An octopus? An elephant? A pig? A dolphin? A dog? A cat? How can you rank the intelligence of these very different animals when they each have radically different ways of relating to the world, and therefore, to us?
The real premise that the article raises is not that dogs are more intelligent than cats, but that the degree of sociability can serve as a proxy indicator for intelligence. The logical position on this hypothesis is that it is probably reasonable, but considered in isolation of other known measures of human intelligence, it is also unlikely to be sufficient.
The anthropocentric view of intelligence is that something or someone is "intelligent" if we can understand it, or relate to it. This is a similar claim to the one put forth in the article. Because dogs do exhibit social characteristics that humans can relate to and work with, they are "more intelligent." But as I've pointed out, this isn't necessarily a complete characterization of the nature of intelligence, as for example, hypothetical alien beings from another planet might possess the technology to visit us, yet if we could not understand them or relate to them, we would consider them stupid under such a criterion.