Are you that sure??? The 1869 MIT entrance exam, the Algebra version, looks to be functionally the same. The notation is slightly different but not much more than the way English was written back then. If written in "modernized" notation the Algebra exam would look like to be any given in my Algebra II high school class.
Surely one that is excellent with college freshman Calculus could easily tutor on the subject even if the last Calculus class he had was 30 years ago with a little effort on learning the "new" notation.
You would think weight loss would seem to be a Thermodynamics problem, eat less calories than you burn. But when you consider the effect of Insulin, hunger, and the fact that each person has a different metabolism, at different times, in different circumstances.
For instance you would think if you burned 2000 calories a day that a diet of 800 calories a day would make you continually burn off weight you might be right, in the short term. So why do some people that are overweight and have been on a continual 1000 calorie-a-day diet tend to stay overweight and do not lose anymore weight? It is called "Starvation Mode". This is when the body starts using the calories it gets more efficiently. It was a needed survival technique to prevent starvation in the Dark Ages. Not such a good technique today.
Also some diets that radically restrict calories tend to make people hungry. I mean REALLY hungry. A sick kind of hunger. Hungry enough that they can't think of anything but hunger. Their body is screaming EAT EAT EAT EAT!!!!!! If weight loss was solely a thermodynamics problem why would their hunger center act like a total drama queen when many of these people have enough stored energy to run multiple marathons? Why are they still really really hungry when they have more than enough stored energy for days, weeks, months or years? If I am 30 lbs overweight it should be easy for me not eat any food for the next 40 days. Why is it my body give me headaches and low blood sugar when I skip a meal or two or three?
The problem of weight loss is not Thermodynamic, it is mostly Biological! Many people, especially non overweight people, don't get this.
I agree. The truly wealthy are job destroyers when capital gains are barely taxed. The wealthy then have no incentive to become "angel investors" or aggressively invest tooffset the higher taxes.
I'm afraid that Congress will group together the merely "rich" (those earning between 250K and 1M) and the truly wealthy (multi-millionaires and billionaires) Those that earn less than a million a year tend to be small/medium business owners or managers of larger companies. It is the small/medium business owners that tend to be job creators since they do not benefit a much from "economy of scale".
That means if there is additional work to be done the owner has to do it or hire a contractor/employee for the job. There are no other options for the small/medium business owner since productivity gains often does not free up another worker to do the additional work that easily. In larger companies productivity gains means doing more work with fewer employees. Employees/contractors can be shuffled to do additional work almost as will as productivity increases.
If that is "class warfare" then the extreme wealthy and powerful have been winning this battle for the last few decades. It is the middle class that is losing big time. Do they really think that they can have the massive market in the US without a stable or growing middle class? Sure we can have a functional market where 95% of the people are in poverty but the US market would be decimated if this happens.
Another economic point, the internet is full of Chicken Littles saying this is like 1929. I beg to differ. Historically this economy echoes that of 1937 with a Congress determined to balance a budget during a depression, with an increase in unemployment in 1938. If that is true we will likely have 5+ years of hard times. I say prepare for the long haul an if you have to retire within the next 5 years, I am truly sorry, for you are completely screwed over.
That is a legitimate concern. However we have a tax structure now that those earning tens of millions of dollars do not have to pay, in percentage, what most of us pay. The math shows that neither just increasing taxes nor just spending cuts will slow down the red ink of our government, both things will have to be done.
Unfortunately those that can "afford" higher taxes will have to pay more. I just wish it came from Capital Gains. Higher taxes on Capital Gains forces those that want to sit on money to find more profitable endeavors to offset the taxation. The risk is increased and so if investment is fledgling companies.
So how long will we Americans be able to insulate ourselves from the violence across the border? I bet is that we will eventually have to invade Mexico and fight a "dirty war" against the cartels (we will call them terrorists and treat them as such). It will be a bloody and expensive war of at least a decade or longer. At this point I'm not sure making MJ legal would stop this situation, which seems to be as bad or worse in Mexico than the Colombia in the 1980's.
This is why investigation and arrest records need to be sealed from the general public and let only the conviction records be available. Many people get property seized and even arrest when they have committed no crime. Remember the presumption of innocence? I know that a quaint idea but we voters need to insist our representatives pass laws that protect that idea or it will be dead, permanently!
If not then we will have lost our basic rights as citizens for our Constitutional rights will not be preserved if you fight for your rights and authorities can cast you as guilty by seizing property and arresting you with some trumped up charge only to drop the charge before a bond hearing. Spend an hour in jail and be presumed guilty by society forever? That is what we are headed towards.
It will be worse if it is done poorly, just like anything else. Beyond that I, and most of us, simply don't have the knowledge to evaluate this idea.
If someone in education studies could give their professional opinions on this matter it would be helpful in this forum. Especially about the data on this method, the pros and cons, and the conditions of any experiments on the 4 day week
At least I know my personal experience is too narrow and too old to be definitive concerning the subject.
As you say we have the potential capability of surviving the annihilation of Earth.
The reason for the pessimism is that we have promoted, or self-promoted, absolute psychopaths as leaders seemingly hellbent on the destruction of the world for personal or ideological gain. This may be enough to assure that we will NOT use our immense potential capabilities to colonize other planets and star systems before we commit total self-destruction.
I must give the Australian Police kudos for how they handled this from start to now. Contrast that to the collar bombing that happened in the US. I saw that video and that is something I wish I could unsee. After the collar bomb went off there was a policeman running up the decapitated man with a gun drawn. Yeah right! The guy was dead right there and the cop still had a gun on him. Everything done by policy and procedure. I bet the same thing would've been done to that girl if she had been in the US.
And no this is NOT some "foreigner" bashing America. I am an American bashing our country's lack of brave compassion in our society. We Americans actually punish and marginalize people who go out on a limb to dispense mercy and compassion instead of dishing out the authoritarian policies.
If the actions of the Australian police are a mark of a civilized people then Australia has done itself proud and America has fallen short.
Good grief! I hope we Americans don't adopt this! The last thing I want is Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin (who is working very hard in her cross country campaign to NOT run for President) to totally spam my inbox with their insane electronic diarrhea during their 2011-2012 campaign.
Electronic Pigeon holes? Does that mean Australia will be using Electronic Carrier Pigeons? If so how fast can these Electronic Carrier Pigeons fly? Will they be like Borg Pigeons with laser eyes and integrated GPS tracking?
I am sure everyone in world is six steps away from knowing some named Kevin (or some language variant of that name meaning "handsome" or "beloved") that eats Bacon or something that fits the definition of Bacon except from another animal.
Yes it does seem to read like that. I think he, and others like him, are using the wrong metric, a metric was was true in the past but not the present. It would be like saying medicine is stuck because we have not discovered any new bodily organ for over 100 years. Believe it or not back in the 18th and 19th Centuries the progress of medicine was measured in how many new organs we can discover, or at least seemed to be by the small number of books we have on medicine from back then. Today we use a totally different metric.
We don't generate tons of "deep thought ideas" because those kind of ideas are required to be better and more able to withstand the "well, we tried that idea exactly that way and this is the result", which is easier to find now. For example, back in the 19th century you could come up with many ideas new collectivism and capitalism in society. Today we know the result of those ideas so any new idea on that subject can't be a rehash to be defined as a "new idea".
It is actually a small subset of Republicans called the "Tea Party" that brought this mess to a head. This group will cause disaster after disaster in our government just to prove a point. Since we don't have anyone in Government that is willing to stop them and it is likely that they will say anything to get reelected, S&P has it right....we are screwed for now.
Nope, that will likely not work. The flying public is already angry at TSA and wants this gropefest and naked scanning to go away. The rest of the public seems immune to the media reports about the scanners and TSA's actions. Also, if the scanners are taken out the TSA will simply force EVERYONE to get groped. The scanners are bad but the groping is worse for the passengers. We want TSA out of the airport checkpoint business as it is being done today. Nothing short of a terrorist attack INSIDE the TSA checkpoint itself will stop it, and at then it might not as TSA will set up a "pre-checkpoint" for the checkpoint.
Thank you. As one of many that MUST occasionally fly for my job, as my employer mandates, I have no discretion in such decisions. I go to recovery businesses, not for stupid meetings. I need to get anywhere in the US and Canada within 12 hours and driving is not always an option. I HATE the TSA with a passion. I HATE that they are essentially above the law that we common folk have to follow. If I did body searches this way I would be arrest and convicted of assault. If I operated an X-ray machine outside of state and federal regulations we common folk must follow I would be arrested and convicted of assault as well. It wouldn't have mattered if they had a choice of submitting to this outrage to get services or leave.
I think the idea of shunning will not work by itself but it will put pressure against this security theater gone wrong. That being said your idea is the only effective one we can all participate in. Writing to Congresscritters haven't helped. Writing to TSA about our displeasure will not help. Contributing to anti-TSA groups haven't helped either.
The reason we have TSA groping passengers and X-ray scanners (which are a bigger danger to TSA agents than any individual passenger) is that most people are not rational. The scanners and the TSA search procedures make some of these people "feel safe" while flying. In fact they wouldn't mind security theater for every place they visit.
These people are panic prone and willing to sell out their most essential rights for the right to drive through a toll booth, let alone for "feeling safe" while flying. For many people there is no understanding why Constitutional freedoms, which are become more limited, even exist. These are the people that want others arrested for having a simple non-violent protest or want books banned that they don't agree with or want "prayer back in the schools" because they assume that their particular brand of religion must be foisted on all children because it "seems right". They also want security checkpoints everywhere, as long as it "makes us safe" and have no idea that there are any other rational being that would take offense to that very idea.
These are the most dangerous of our citizens, the ones who want to do things that "seem right" and go with their "gut feeling" in spite of the facts or evidence. I think the word I'm looking for is "truthiness". These people automatically believe in "truthiness" instead of stopping and thinking something out step by step.
Now how can we take back control with over a hundred million of these folks in America actually supporting all or some of TSA's BS?
What TSA doesn't want to tell their own agents and the flying public are the basics of ionizing radiation exposure.
The basic formula for radiation exposure is: time X radiation level X ratio of body exposure = total exposure.
Since the backscatter scanner's radiation exposure is focused mostly on the skin the ratio would be roughly 20 to 1 (1 being an entire body Gamma Ray or X-Ray exposure) as opposed to a normal chest X-ray that exposes mostly the chest but does expose the entire body to X-Rays which would probably be 3 to 1. That makes the X-ray about 7 times damaging to the skin.
The time of exposure is very short for any one individual in the backscatter scanner so this factor is very low per exposure. That means the TSA agents will get hundreds of exposures every day as opposed to a traveler that would get dozens of scans per year at most.
The next factor is radiation level. Clearly the radiation level per exposure is much higher in the scanner than outside of the backscatter scanner but backscatter X-rays tend to escape outside the scanner via openings so the exposure outside would NOT be negligible compared to the exposure inside. Let's say the TSA agent gets 1/20th of the exposure any one passenger gets.
This formula predicts that the average passenger will get a tiny amount of radiation it is mostly concentrated in the skin equal to that of several cross-county flights (extremely low) and that the TSA agents will receive hundreds of times that dose per year (not so low).
This all assumes that the backscatter scanner is in prefect working order, if not it may give a X-ray up to hundreds of times above normal. This is why all other X-Ray equipment is run and inspected by X-Ray technicians. At TSA checkpoints you will not find any such animal.
At any rate is will be the TSA agents that may get low but considerable radiation exposures passenger after passenger, day after day, week after week, thousands of significantly reduced exposures every week as each average passenger gets a higher dose a few times a year at most. 1/20th times thousands of exposures is still about a FEW HUNDRED times the backscatter X-ray exposure than what any average passenger would experience per year. It is very conceivable that TSA agents may have an elevated risk of skin cancers in the future and we may be seeing the first signs of this with the cancer cluster.
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Are you that sure??? The 1869 MIT entrance exam, the Algebra version, looks to be functionally the same. The notation is slightly different but not much more than the way English was written back then. If written in "modernized" notation the Algebra exam would look like to be any given in my Algebra II high school class.
Surely one that is excellent with college freshman Calculus could easily tutor on the subject even if the last Calculus class he had was 30 years ago with a little effort on learning the "new" notation.
You would think weight loss would seem to be a Thermodynamics problem, eat less calories than you burn. But when you consider the effect of Insulin, hunger, and the fact that each person has a different metabolism, at different times, in different circumstances.
For instance you would think if you burned 2000 calories a day that a diet of 800 calories a day would make you continually burn off weight you might be right, in the short term. So why do some people that are overweight and have been on a continual 1000 calorie-a-day diet tend to stay overweight and do not lose anymore weight? It is called "Starvation Mode". This is when the body starts using the calories it gets more efficiently. It was a needed survival technique to prevent starvation in the Dark Ages. Not such a good technique today.
Also some diets that radically restrict calories tend to make people hungry. I mean REALLY hungry. A sick kind of hunger. Hungry enough that they can't think of anything but hunger. Their body is screaming EAT EAT EAT EAT!!!!!! If weight loss was solely a thermodynamics problem why would their hunger center act like a total drama queen when many of these people have enough stored energy to run multiple marathons? Why are they still really really hungry when they have more than enough stored energy for days, weeks, months or years? If I am 30 lbs overweight it should be easy for me not eat any food for the next 40 days. Why is it my body give me headaches and low blood sugar when I skip a meal or two or three?
The problem of weight loss is not Thermodynamic, it is mostly Biological! Many people, especially non overweight people, don't get this.
The BREAK LIGHT is the CHECK ENGINE light that comes on when something expensive breaks in your car
Is Sam playing bumper cars again?
I agree. The truly wealthy are job destroyers when capital gains are barely taxed. The wealthy then have no incentive to become "angel investors" or aggressively invest tooffset the higher taxes.
I'm afraid that Congress will group together the merely "rich" (those earning between 250K and 1M) and the truly wealthy (multi-millionaires and billionaires) Those that earn less than a million a year tend to be small/medium business owners or managers of larger companies. It is the small/medium business owners that tend to be job creators since they do not benefit a much from "economy of scale".
That means if there is additional work to be done the owner has to do it or hire a contractor/employee for the job. There are no other options for the small/medium business owner since productivity gains often does not free up another worker to do the additional work that easily. In larger companies productivity gains means doing more work with fewer employees. Employees/contractors can be shuffled to do additional work almost as will as productivity increases.
If that is "class warfare" then the extreme wealthy and powerful have been winning this battle for the last few decades. It is the middle class that is losing big time. Do they really think that they can have the massive market in the US without a stable or growing middle class? Sure we can have a functional market where 95% of the people are in poverty but the US market would be decimated if this happens.
Another economic point, the internet is full of Chicken Littles saying this is like 1929. I beg to differ. Historically this economy echoes that of 1937 with a Congress determined to balance a budget during a depression, with an increase in unemployment in 1938. If that is true we will likely have 5+ years of hard times. I say prepare for the long haul an if you have to retire within the next 5 years, I am truly sorry, for you are completely screwed over.
That is a legitimate concern. However we have a tax structure now that those earning tens of millions of dollars do not have to pay, in percentage, what most of us pay. The math shows that neither just increasing taxes nor just spending cuts will slow down the red ink of our government, both things will have to be done.
Unfortunately those that can "afford" higher taxes will have to pay more. I just wish it came from Capital Gains. Higher taxes on Capital Gains forces those that want to sit on money to find more profitable endeavors to offset the taxation. The risk is increased and so if investment is fledgling companies.
So how long will we Americans be able to insulate ourselves from the violence across the border? I bet is that we will eventually have to invade Mexico and fight a "dirty war" against the cartels (we will call them terrorists and treat them as such). It will be a bloody and expensive war of at least a decade or longer. At this point I'm not sure making MJ legal would stop this situation, which seems to be as bad or worse in Mexico than the Colombia in the 1980's.
This is why investigation and arrest records need to be sealed from the general public and let only the conviction records be available. Many people get property seized and even arrest when they have committed no crime. Remember the presumption of innocence? I know that a quaint idea but we voters need to insist our representatives pass laws that protect that idea or it will be dead, permanently!
If not then we will have lost our basic rights as citizens for our Constitutional rights will not be preserved if you fight for your rights and authorities can cast you as guilty by seizing property and arresting you with some trumped up charge only to drop the charge before a bond hearing. Spend an hour in jail and be presumed guilty by society forever? That is what we are headed towards.
Which would explain why avid runners that do 3 marathons a week look like heck.
Maybe it is convergence. We salute you CmdrTaco!
It will be worse if it is done poorly, just like anything else. Beyond that I, and most of us, simply don't have the knowledge to evaluate this idea.
If someone in education studies could give their professional opinions on this matter it would be helpful in this forum. Especially about the data on this method, the pros and cons, and the conditions of any experiments on the 4 day week
At least I know my personal experience is too narrow and too old to be definitive concerning the subject.
Of course you know this will be done poorly if these are the average American public school systems.
As you say we have the potential capability of surviving the annihilation of Earth.
The reason for the pessimism is that we have promoted, or self-promoted, absolute psychopaths as leaders seemingly hellbent on the destruction of the world for personal or ideological gain. This may be enough to assure that we will NOT use our immense potential capabilities to colonize other planets and star systems before we commit total self-destruction.
I must give the Australian Police kudos for how they handled this from start to now. Contrast that to the collar bombing that happened in the US. I saw that video and that is something I wish I could unsee. After the collar bomb went off there was a policeman running up the decapitated man with a gun drawn. Yeah right! The guy was dead right there and the cop still had a gun on him. Everything done by policy and procedure. I bet the same thing would've been done to that girl if she had been in the US.
And no this is NOT some "foreigner" bashing America. I am an American bashing our country's lack of brave compassion in our society. We Americans actually punish and marginalize people who go out on a limb to dispense mercy and compassion instead of dishing out the authoritarian policies.
If the actions of the Australian police are a mark of a civilized people then Australia has done itself proud and America has fallen short.
Good grief! I hope we Americans don't adopt this! The last thing I want is Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin (who is working very hard in her cross country campaign to NOT run for President) to totally spam my inbox with their insane electronic diarrhea during their 2011-2012 campaign.
Electronic Pigeon holes? Does that mean Australia will be using Electronic Carrier Pigeons? If so how fast can these Electronic Carrier Pigeons fly? Will they be like Borg Pigeons with laser eyes and integrated GPS tracking?
I am sure everyone in world is six steps away from knowing some named Kevin (or some language variant of that name meaning "handsome" or "beloved") that eats Bacon or something that fits the definition of Bacon except from another animal.
Is that close?
Yes it does seem to read like that. I think he, and others like him, are using the wrong metric, a metric was was true in the past but not the present. It would be like saying medicine is stuck because we have not discovered any new bodily organ for over 100 years. Believe it or not back in the 18th and 19th Centuries the progress of medicine was measured in how many new organs we can discover, or at least seemed to be by the small number of books we have on medicine from back then. Today we use a totally different metric.
We don't generate tons of "deep thought ideas" because those kind of ideas are required to be better and more able to withstand the "well, we tried that idea exactly that way and this is the result", which is easier to find now. For example, back in the 19th century you could come up with many ideas new collectivism and capitalism in society. Today we know the result of those ideas so any new idea on that subject can't be a rehash to be defined as a "new idea".
We in Atlanta, when we will need to do this recycling, will be prohibited from doing it because Alabama and Florida depend on our outflows.
It is actually a small subset of Republicans called the "Tea Party" that brought this mess to a head. This group will cause disaster after disaster in our government just to prove a point. Since we don't have anyone in Government that is willing to stop them and it is likely that they will say anything to get reelected, S&P has it right....we are screwed for now.
Nope, that will likely not work. The flying public is already angry at TSA and wants this gropefest and naked scanning to go away. The rest of the public seems immune to the media reports about the scanners and TSA's actions. Also, if the scanners are taken out the TSA will simply force EVERYONE to get groped. The scanners are bad but the groping is worse for the passengers. We want TSA out of the airport checkpoint business as it is being done today. Nothing short of a terrorist attack INSIDE the TSA checkpoint itself will stop it, and at then it might not as TSA will set up a "pre-checkpoint" for the checkpoint.
Thank you. As one of many that MUST occasionally fly for my job, as my employer mandates, I have no discretion in such decisions. I go to recovery businesses, not for stupid meetings. I need to get anywhere in the US and Canada within 12 hours and driving is not always an option. I HATE the TSA with a passion. I HATE that they are essentially above the law that we common folk have to follow. If I did body searches this way I would be arrest and convicted of assault. If I operated an X-ray machine outside of state and federal regulations we common folk must follow I would be arrested and convicted of assault as well. It wouldn't have mattered if they had a choice of submitting to this outrage to get services or leave.
I think the idea of shunning will not work by itself but it will put pressure against this security theater gone wrong. That being said your idea is the only effective one we can all participate in. Writing to Congresscritters haven't helped. Writing to TSA about our displeasure will not help. Contributing to anti-TSA groups haven't helped either.
The reason we have TSA groping passengers and X-ray scanners (which are a bigger danger to TSA agents than any individual passenger) is that most people are not rational. The scanners and the TSA search procedures make some of these people "feel safe" while flying. In fact they wouldn't mind security theater for every place they visit.
These people are panic prone and willing to sell out their most essential rights for the right to drive through a toll booth, let alone for "feeling safe" while flying. For many people there is no understanding why Constitutional freedoms, which are become more limited, even exist. These are the people that want others arrested for having a simple non-violent protest or want books banned that they don't agree with or want "prayer back in the schools" because they assume that their particular brand of religion must be foisted on all children because it "seems right". They also want security checkpoints everywhere, as long as it "makes us safe" and have no idea that there are any other rational being that would take offense to that very idea.
These are the most dangerous of our citizens, the ones who want to do things that "seem right" and go with their "gut feeling" in spite of the facts or evidence. I think the word I'm looking for is "truthiness". These people automatically believe in "truthiness" instead of stopping and thinking something out step by step.
Now how can we take back control with over a hundred million of these folks in America actually supporting all or some of TSA's BS?
What TSA doesn't want to tell their own agents and the flying public are the basics of ionizing radiation exposure.
The basic formula for radiation exposure is: time X radiation level X ratio of body exposure = total exposure.
Since the backscatter scanner's radiation exposure is focused mostly on the skin the ratio would be roughly 20 to 1 (1 being an entire body Gamma Ray or X-Ray exposure) as opposed to a normal chest X-ray that exposes mostly the chest but does expose the entire body to X-Rays which would probably be 3 to 1. That makes the X-ray about 7 times damaging to the skin.
The time of exposure is very short for any one individual in the backscatter scanner so this factor is very low per exposure. That means the TSA agents will get hundreds of exposures every day as opposed to a traveler that would get dozens of scans per year at most.
The next factor is radiation level. Clearly the radiation level per exposure is much higher in the scanner than outside of the backscatter scanner but backscatter X-rays tend to escape outside the scanner via openings so the exposure outside would NOT be negligible compared to the exposure inside. Let's say the TSA agent gets 1/20th of the exposure any one passenger gets.
This formula predicts that the average passenger will get a tiny amount of radiation it is mostly concentrated in the skin equal to that of several cross-county flights (extremely low) and that the TSA agents will receive hundreds of times that dose per year (not so low).
This all assumes that the backscatter scanner is in prefect working order, if not it may give a X-ray up to hundreds of times above normal. This is why all other X-Ray equipment is run and inspected by X-Ray technicians. At TSA checkpoints you will not find any such animal.
At any rate is will be the TSA agents that may get low but considerable radiation exposures passenger after passenger, day after day, week after week, thousands of significantly reduced exposures every week as each average passenger gets a higher dose a few times a year at most. 1/20th times thousands of exposures is still about a FEW HUNDRED times the backscatter X-ray exposure than what any average passenger would experience per year. It is very conceivable that TSA agents may have an elevated risk of skin cancers in the future and we may be seeing the first signs of this with the cancer cluster.