Replace MBA with EdD however, and you might be on to something...
This "idea" was generated by the school board. While it is unlikely, there might be an MBA or a lawyer on the board; there is almost no chance that any school board member has an education degree. Most probably, one of the board members had this at their place of employment and decided that it made sense for the district. There are arguments in favor of the idea, but then even the Dred Scott decision had legal arguments in its favor.
I have to admit not ever reading xkcd, having more important things on my Kindle.
If you've never read it, then how do you know? A little bit of faith based knowledge there?
No, just snobbery, like those people who refused to waste their time with a TV until the mid-1970's, then loudly proclaimed that they only watched PBS because there was nothing worth watching on any other channels.
Barring Persepolis, Berlin, Washington DC, Riyadh, and Brasilia (all sacred capitals rather than pre-existing natural cities), name them.
Los Angeles. Only city I am aware of, but it essentially started with real estate development. There are plenty of books about why it shouldn't exist... and I tend to agree with them. IIRC, it had a terrible natural harbor, insufficient water supply, no real natural resources, and wasn't on a major trade route.
It most certainly WAS on one, El Camino Royal (sp?). And while its harbor isn't much, neither are any other harbors between San Diego and San Francisco harbors. The California coast is almost as bad, in that respect, as the West coast of Africa (alas, no fyords until the next Earth). As for resources, it has OIL. In Hollywood, there is a special ordinance banning drilling, else there would be grasshoppers and derricks all over the place. Granted, LA shouldn't be any where as big as it is, and why the center is so far from the harbor I have never had explained, even by my sister who used to live there, but a city, there, makes sense (up to a few hundred thousand).
But the quickest route to Paris is now over land, not water.
But the cheapest way is still to ship things by ship, not plane or rail. Even if the USA was reduced to trade insignificance, the trading areas in the SE are still better situated to deal with India and East Africa (all those untapped resources, yum) than Western China, which hasn't been close to anywhere since the Silk Road closed down.
Why are there so many people in Atlanta? It's nowhere. What, all there for the peach plantations?
Sorry, but it is on a river. Probably the end of the navigable section (or at least once was -- inland cities often grow up at portages), and it grew up as a collection spot for the cotton plantations. Pre-Civil War, cotton was the biggest US export.
Many large cities started from nothing.
Barring Persepolis, Berlin, Washington DC, Riyadh, and Brasilia (all sacred capitals rather than pre-existing natural cities), name them.
The only thing you need is water, and even Phoenix didn't need that.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but my maps show Phoenix on the Salt River, a major tributary of the Gila River, a tributary of the Colorado, so before LA started sucking it all dry they had loads of water, probably even a navigable channel out to the Gulf Of California.
Cities grow up when people have a reason to stay THERE, rather than a day's journey or more away. They stay around when there is still a reason to stay there when things change (hence the lack of population in most Western ghost towns), or when the change is not big enough to make enough of a difference.
Maybe we should start a petition for them to tell us why they don't give meaningful responses to our petitions when it was their idea to start with?
You misunderstand, entirely. The purpose of a Suggestion Box is to collect "suggestions" in an easy way to dispose of them, rather than having workers buttonholing management with their gripes. Likewise this site is to collect crackpot notions like building a Death Star or having men with guns threaten people using customary measures rather than someone else's subset of metric measures.
Actually, based on incorrect measurements of the size of the Earth that were set in stone (well whatever the standard meter was made of. Iridium?) before the error was discovered.
The US government DID mandate metric for most purposes, years ago. Barring buildings, military hardware, NASA, USDA, NIH, and FDA are all obliged to use metric rather than customary units (probably other agencies as well, but I do not know which ones for certain).
Actually, going to the metric system would likely increase productivity by a non-trivial amount, in the long run. In the short run, though, it would be mildly harmful, depending on how aggressively it was enforced.
We already went to the metric system, years ago. All customary US measures (called Imperial or English measures by the ignorant) are legally defined in terms of metric measurements. It has been legal to use metric measures for years, using metric is required in some cases (weapons and liquor come to mind) but mostly is a matter between commercial parties. You could specify that your house be built to metric sizes rather than to 16", 20", or 24" centers; your architect and builder would just charge more for the additional work. The difference is that, in the USA, we don't let the police arrest people using the old measures as the French did (and in theory would still do) anymore than we specify which names can legally be given to babies.
We've disliked France far longer than we've been fighting Iraq.
Since we are mentally 17th century Englishmen, even if not English by descent, we have despised the French since the Glorious Revolution gave us Nassau Counties and Williamsburgs in the original states, and the various 18th C wars against the French in Canada and the Mississippi watershed just made it stick. When the American Revolution ended, the USA signed a separate peace with Great Britain before the French did, and the US negotiators all congratulated each other for screwing the French (the francophilic Franklin and Jefferson having rotated back home) out of any real gains. The XYZ Affair then killed any remaining good will until WWI brought a little back during the 15 months that we were in it.
Actually, the printing process is only about 10% of the cost to publishers, and only books that have already sold moderately well get converted to paperback, so the high price for newly-published e-books sorta makes sense. OTOH, charging hardback prices for books that have been already made the transition to paperback is just rent-seeking. OTTH, the suckers pay, so why NOT charge that much? It is entirely possible that the industry does not want wholesale adoption, yet, because they haven't the servers for it (and no one wants the books stored on all your local machines:-), yet.
Oh, it gets even better. McCain actually wasn't born in America, he was born in Panama.
In the Canal Zone, which was treated as a US base (i.e., US territory for almost all purposes, just like an embassy is). Not in any state, but then, neither are Puerto Ricans, Samoans (American Samoa, at least), or Hawaiians born before 1960, and it doesn't affect their citizenship status.
One thought though: if she were too young, and her child were born in a country that does not honour jus soli (citizenship by birth), where would that make the child a citizen of? Utterly stateless? Would it be a mere formality to obtain US (in this case) citizenship for the child? Has this ever been known to happen and what was the result?
The child would probably be state-less, until naturalized somewhere. The Wikipedia article on jus soli has a section on modifications (i.e., restrictions) to it, and one of the reported criticisms is that it leads to statelessness.
The Vulcans came from the habitable planet that orbited Tau Ceti, according to my Starfleet Technical Manual. Given that they invented the Prime Directive, they probably have to maintain radio silence (frex, using very directional masers where necessary for radio-band communications) to avoid clueing in lesser civilizations.
Plus the Andorians live right next to them and we all know what they are like.
This was suicide after the player shot and killed his (current) girlfriend and mother of his child. In this case, suicide was just "doing the right thing" except that he chose to do it in a public place, rather than in his home. He also waited until the cops were approaching, presumably not wanting them to interfere.
*Killing the girlfriend* is the evidence of brain damage, as it implies rather a problem handling his temper.
Oh? Say that again in another billion years, when the Sun heats up enough to evaporate all the liquid water on the Earth, probably turning it into another Venus.
It's physically impossible for an object to spin on two axes - if you try you just get it spinning around some intermediate axis.
Having a large moon does act to reduce the precession and nutation of the axis, though. Mars will, over a few million years, change the angle of its axis enough that its extreme might be over 45 degrees; there will be similar changes to climate during the period. Having this much variability cannot be good for any life that arose during one part of the cycle, unless something else (like extensive oceans) buffers the changes to allow life to shift to where it is better. The distant large co-orbital planet of the Earth-Moon system (co-orbital around the Sun, that is; the Moon never goes backwards in its solar orbit) acts like a much wider gyroscope than a single planet could have, dampening the axis variability to only a few degrees, which will produce much more stable conditions.
Of course, the moon started out lower and the Earth rotated faster back when life was just getting started, leading to what we would consider monster tides (supposedly averaging hundreds of feet back in the time of the Australian stromatolites. If the amino acids were produced in the atmosphere, this would help wash them into the oceans where they can interact for a few million years to start life. This may make a "moon" about as large as ours another requirement for life rather than just a feature of our world, but there is no real way to be certain unless we somehow detect another life-bearing world with our telescopes.
Slashdot Mirror
Replace MBA with EdD however, and you might be on to something...
This "idea" was generated by the school board. While it is unlikely, there might be an MBA or a lawyer on the board; there is almost no chance that any school board member has an education degree. Most probably, one of the board members had this at their place of employment and decided that it made sense for the district. There are arguments in favor of the idea, but then even the Dred Scott decision had legal arguments in its favor.
I have to admit not ever reading xkcd, having more important things on my Kindle.
If you've never read it, then how do you know? A little bit of faith based knowledge there?
No, just snobbery, like those people who refused to waste their time with a TV until the mid-1970's, then loudly proclaimed that they only watched PBS because there was nothing worth watching on any other channels.
Many large cities started from nothing.
Barring Persepolis, Berlin, Washington DC, Riyadh, and Brasilia (all sacred capitals rather than pre-existing natural cities), name them.
Los Angeles. Only city I am aware of, but it essentially started with real estate development. There are plenty of books about why it shouldn't exist... and I tend to agree with them. IIRC, it had a terrible natural harbor, insufficient water supply, no real natural resources, and wasn't on a major trade route.
It most certainly WAS on one, El Camino Royal (sp?). And while its harbor isn't much, neither are any other harbors between San Diego and San Francisco harbors. The California coast is almost as bad, in that respect, as the West coast of Africa (alas, no fyords until the next Earth). As for resources, it has OIL. In Hollywood, there is a special ordinance banning drilling, else there would be grasshoppers and derricks all over the place. Granted, LA shouldn't be any where as big as it is, and why the center is so far from the harbor I have never had explained, even by my sister who used to live there, but a city, there, makes sense (up to a few hundred thousand).
I haven't had nearly enough coffee for this discussion.
I haven't had nearly enough LSD for this discussion.
But the quickest route to Paris is now over land, not water.
But the cheapest way is still to ship things by ship, not plane or rail. Even if the USA was reduced to trade insignificance, the trading areas in the SE are still better situated to deal with India and East Africa (all those untapped resources, yum) than Western China, which hasn't been close to anywhere since the Silk Road closed down.
Why are there so many people in Atlanta? It's nowhere. What, all there for the peach plantations?
Sorry, but it is on a river. Probably the end of the navigable section (or at least once was -- inland cities often grow up at portages), and it grew up as a collection spot for the cotton plantations. Pre-Civil War, cotton was the biggest US export.
Many large cities started from nothing.
Barring Persepolis, Berlin, Washington DC, Riyadh, and Brasilia (all sacred capitals rather than pre-existing natural cities), name them.
The only thing you need is water, and even Phoenix didn't need that.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but my maps show Phoenix on the Salt River, a major tributary of the Gila River, a tributary of the Colorado, so before LA started sucking it all dry they had loads of water, probably even a navigable channel out to the Gulf Of California.
Cities grow up when people have a reason to stay THERE, rather than a day's journey or more away. They stay around when there is still a reason to stay there when things change (hence the lack of population in most Western ghost towns), or when the change is not big enough to make enough of a difference.
Maybe we should start a petition for them to tell us why they don't give meaningful responses to our petitions when it was their idea to start with?
You misunderstand, entirely. The purpose of a Suggestion Box is to collect "suggestions" in an easy way to dispose of them, rather than having workers buttonholing management with their gripes. Likewise this site is to collect crackpot notions like building a Death Star or having men with guns threaten people using customary measures rather than someone else's subset of metric measures.
(based on the size of the earth)
Actually, based on incorrect measurements of the size of the Earth that were set in stone (well whatever the standard meter was made of. Iridium?) before the error was discovered.
The US government DID mandate metric for most purposes, years ago. Barring buildings, military hardware, NASA, USDA, NIH, and FDA are all obliged to use metric rather than customary units (probably other agencies as well, but I do not know which ones for certain).
Actually, going to the metric system would likely increase productivity by a non-trivial amount, in the long run. In the short run, though, it would be mildly harmful, depending on how aggressively it was enforced.
We already went to the metric system, years ago. All customary US measures (called Imperial or English measures by the ignorant) are legally defined in terms of metric measurements. It has been legal to use metric measures for years, using metric is required in some cases (weapons and liquor come to mind) but mostly is a matter between commercial parties. You could specify that your house be built to metric sizes rather than to 16", 20", or 24" centers; your architect and builder would just charge more for the additional work. The difference is that, in the USA, we don't let the police arrest people using the old measures as the French did (and in theory would still do) anymore than we specify which names can legally be given to babies.
We've disliked France far longer than we've been fighting Iraq.
Since we are mentally 17th century Englishmen, even if not English by descent, we have despised the French since the Glorious Revolution gave us Nassau Counties and Williamsburgs in the original states, and the various 18th C wars against the French in Canada and the Mississippi watershed just made it stick. When the American Revolution ended, the USA signed a separate peace with Great Britain before the French did, and the US negotiators all congratulated each other for screwing the French (the francophilic Franklin and Jefferson having rotated back home) out of any real gains. The XYZ Affair then killed any remaining good will until WWI brought a little back during the 15 months that we were in it.
Actually, the printing process is only about 10% of the cost to publishers, and only books that have already sold moderately well get converted to paperback, so the high price for newly-published e-books sorta makes sense. OTOH, charging hardback prices for books that have been already made the transition to paperback is just rent-seeking. OTTH, the suckers pay, so why NOT charge that much? It is entirely possible that the industry does not want wholesale adoption, yet, because they haven't the servers for it (and no one wants the books stored on all your local machines :-), yet.
As long as Project Gutenberg remains limited to public domain works, yes, not everyone downloads books illegally.
Of course, if anyone sneaks Sons of the Swordmaker online, that may change :-)
Oh, it gets even better. McCain actually wasn't born in America, he was born in Panama.
In the Canal Zone, which was treated as a US base (i.e., US territory for almost all purposes, just like an embassy is). Not in any state, but then, neither are Puerto Ricans, Samoans (American Samoa, at least), or Hawaiians born before 1960, and it doesn't affect their citizenship status.
One thought though: if she were too young, and her child were born in a country that does not honour jus soli (citizenship by birth), where would that make the child a citizen of? Utterly stateless? Would it be a mere formality to obtain US (in this case) citizenship for the child? Has this ever been known to happen and what was the result?
The child would probably be state-less, until naturalized somewhere. The Wikipedia article on jus soli has a section on modifications (i.e., restrictions) to it, and one of the reported criticisms is that it leads to statelessness.
Where are you getting your news from, Mr. Well-Informed?
As a guess, Al Jazeera, perhaps?
Swoosh, AC as well as whoever modded aztektum's post as Flamebait.
Yep. And FBI profilers who deal with serial killers will tell you the same thing. They pretty much can't shut up.
Serial killers presumably are operating under the burden of being (1) insane or sociopathic (2) already caught, so silence won't help, anymore.
ask jerry and his buddies about that one.
You DO realize that Seinfeld was a comedy series, not a long-running documentary?
No it is not. I have seen many Westerns whose main character was hanged, yet survived.
Clearly, they need to be tossed into a wood chipper. No one survives that!
The Vulcans came from the habitable planet that orbited Tau Ceti, according to my Starfleet Technical Manual. Given that they invented the Prime Directive, they probably have to maintain radio silence (frex, using very directional masers where necessary for radio-band communications) to avoid clueing in lesser civilizations.
Plus the Andorians live right next to them and we all know what they are like.
Zombie dinosaurs chomped their way through the whole planet, then finally decomposed themselves over time.
Um, this refers to the Permian Extinction. Therefore, it was caused by zombie frogs. Not nearly as awesome.
This was suicide after the player shot and killed his (current) girlfriend and mother of his child. In this case, suicide was just "doing the right thing" except that he chose to do it in a public place, rather than in his home. He also waited until the cops were approaching, presumably not wanting them to interfere.
*Killing the girlfriend* is the evidence of brain damage, as it implies rather a problem handling his temper.
Isn't almost everywhere more dynamic than Ohio?
Not in an election year, they aren't!
Oh? Say that again in another billion years, when the Sun heats up enough to evaporate all the liquid water on the Earth, probably turning it into another Venus.
It's physically impossible for an object to spin on two axes - if you try you just get it spinning around some intermediate axis.
Having a large moon does act to reduce the precession and nutation of the axis, though. Mars will, over a few million years, change the angle of its axis enough that its extreme might be over 45 degrees; there will be similar changes to climate during the period. Having this much variability cannot be good for any life that arose during one part of the cycle, unless something else (like extensive oceans) buffers the changes to allow life to shift to where it is better. The distant large co-orbital planet of the Earth-Moon system (co-orbital around the Sun, that is; the Moon never goes backwards in its solar orbit) acts like a much wider gyroscope than a single planet could have, dampening the axis variability to only a few degrees, which will produce much more stable conditions.
Of course, the moon started out lower and the Earth rotated faster back when life was just getting started, leading to what we would consider monster tides (supposedly averaging hundreds of feet back in the time of the Australian stromatolites. If the amino acids were produced in the atmosphere, this would help wash them into the oceans where they can interact for a few million years to start life. This may make a "moon" about as large as ours another requirement for life rather than just a feature of our world, but there is no real way to be certain unless we somehow detect another life-bearing world with our telescopes.